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(( 



HE qIVING 


Present. 


jj 


j by 

DAVID WIIEATOH. 



CHICAGO AND KANSAS CITY : 
WEVER & COMPANY, Publishers. 

1SS4. 




































.W53 


THE LIBRARY 
OR CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 


Copyrighted, 

1884. 

BY D. H. WEVER. 


All Rights Reserved. 














The object and scope of this book is told in the introductory- 
chapters more satisfactorily and at greater length than could be 
done in a preface. The author does not claim to have discovered 
new doctrines or principles, but has labored mainly to develop 
a method by which the rich fruits of the world’s most advanced 
truth and wisdom might be brought within the reach of the com¬ 
mon toiler’s hands. His work has, therefore, been more that of 
an editor than an author. * » 

After the plan of the work had been chosen and defined, the 
task of culling and arranging the testimony to be obtained from 
-every source upon the topics treated proved to be long, laborious 
and perplexing. The choicest wisdom of the greatest and best is 
found scattered here and there amid vast volumes of matter not 
interesting to the general public, and when found it is seldom in 
a shape to be presented under a new head and in a different con¬ 
nection without change. The authorities consulted had in some 
cases to be translated, and in many cases to be either wholly 
rewritten or largely changed in wording to secure a proper adapt¬ 
ation. To do this, however, and at the same time do full justice 
to the original thinker, has been honestly and patiently attempted 
in all such cases. 

The names of a few of the leading authorities consulted will 
be appended. Space forbids anything like a complete list. 

The author is under obligations for assistance in a large share 
of the work to Professor M. E. Locke, whose familiarity with the 
classical languages, and more particularly with the French and 
German literature, made his aid especially valuable. 

It must be borne in mind, at all times, that this book is 
designed, not for the literary recluse, but for the busy world at 





















ABERCROMBIE. 
ALGER. 
ARGYLL. 
BACON. 

BELL. 

BOWEN. 

BUTLER. 

CARPENTER. 

CARL YLE. 

COBBE. 

COLERIDGE. 

/ 

COMBE. 

COMTE. 

COUSIN. 

DALTON. 

DAR WIN. 

DA Y. 

DESCARTES. 

DRAPER. 

EO WLER. 
FRANKLIN. 
GOETHE. 
GUIZOT. 


HAMILTON 

HA VEN. 

HEGEL. 

IIICKOK. 

HOPKINS. 

HUXLE Y. 

KANT. 

LESSING. 

LOCKE. 

McCOSH. 

MILL. 

MOORE. 

MUELLER. 

PALE Y. 

PRIESTLE Y. 

RICHTER. 

RUSKIN. 

UEBER WEG. 

UP HAM. 

WA TTS. 

WA YLAND. 
WHA TELE Y. 
WOOD. 


4 


-‘<S> 


■O' 


■©. 

















OBJECT AND SCOPE . Page 9 

INTRODUCTION. 

The Problem of Existence . . 13 

The Answer of Ancient Greece 14 
The Mediaeval Answer . . .15 

Other Answers.16 

The Answer of Jesus . . .17 

Modern Answers.19 

GENERAL ANALYSIS OF HU¬ 
MAN NATURE .... 22 

A Plan for the Analysis ... 23 

The Analysis (facing pages 24 


and 25.) 

BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 

A Complicated Machine . . 26 

The Frame.27 

Nutritive Apparatus ... 29 

Digestive System.30 

Circulatory System .... 30 

Respiratory System .... 32 

Nervous System . 34 

Organs of Special Sense . . 39 

Protective Organs .... 41 

Analysis of Bodily Nature . 42 

Observations. 

Disease and Health .... 43 

Physical Cultivation .... 44 

Conclusion. 47 


GENERAL ANALYSIS OF THE 
MIND. 

Importance of Mental Science . 5 1 


Present Purpose — Theories . 52 

The Analysis.54 

THE INTELLECT. 

First Questions.56 

Analysis of the Intellect 63 to 66 

67 

63 
63 


Intuition. 

Personal Existence 
Confidence in our Senses 
Confidence in our Mental Proc 

esses . 

Personal Identity 
Adequate Causes .... 
Uniformity of Nature 
Intuitive Conceptions 
Presentative Power, or the 

Five Senses. 

Sight and Hearing 

Touch . 

Taste and Smell .... 

Distance. 

Cultivation of the Senses 
False Perception .... 

Observations. 

Representation .... 

Memory. 

Recollection — Laws of Associ 

ation. 

Analysis of Representative Powe 

Resemblance. 

Contrast. 

Nearness. 

Cause and Effect 


69 

69 

70 

71 

73 

74 

75 

76 

77 

78 
81 

84 

85 
83 
89 

95 

96 

96 

98 

99 
103 


5 




































6 


CONTENTS, 


Attention. 

Lapse of Time. 

Differences. 

Repetition. 

Relation to General Mental 

Power. 

Quick Learners . . . . ’. 

Influence of Disease 
The Law Governing Forgetful¬ 
ness . 

Memory in Animals 

Aids to Memory .... 

Cultivation of Memory 

Imagination . 

Excessive Imagination . 
Cultivation of Imagination 
Highest Uses of Imagination . 

REFLECTIVE POWER. 

Our Chief Faculty .... 

Classification. 

Testimony. 

Deductive Reasoning . 
Inductive Reasoning 
Reasoning from Analogy . 
Cultivation of Reflection 
How to Improve Power of 

Thought . 

The Use of Thinking . 
Natural Methods of Reflection. 

How to Think. 

The Intellect—Kindred Top¬ 
ics . 

Sleep — Dreams — Somnambu¬ 
lism . 

Insanity. 

Intelligence of Animals 

THE SENSIBILITIES . . . 

Analysis. 

The Emotions. 

Cheerfulness or Melancholy . 


104 

105 

106 

107 

109 

114 

115 

119 

121 

123 

125 

129 

134 

135 
139 

143 

145 

148 

153 

157 

160 

162 

164 

175 

179 

210 

211 
229 
233 

251 

254 

255 


Sorrow at the Loss of Friends . 

Sympathy. 

Self-Approval, or Disapproval 

The Ludicrous. 

Surprise ....... 

The Sublime and Beautiful 
Reverence. 

THE AFFECTIONS. 

Love ........ 

Love of Husband and Wife 
Love of Kindred .... 

Love of Friends. 

Love of Benefactors 

Love of Home and Country . 

Hate. 

Envy. 

Jealousy. 

Revenge . 

THE DESIRES. 

Animal Desires. 

Rational Desires .... 

Happiness ...... 

Desire of Knowledge 
Desire of Power .... 

Desire of Money .... 

Ambition or Desire of Superior¬ 
ity . 

Desire of Society .... 

Desire of Esteem .... 

Hope and Fear. 

Observations. 

The Part it Plays in Business . 
The Inner Life . . . 

The Answer. 

Esteem and Self-Approval . 

Self-Deception. 

Man’s Motives. 

THE WILL. 

First Thoughts. 

Habit.. 


257 

259 

262 

264 

267 

267 

269 


272 

272 

274 

277 

282 

2S3 

285 

286 

287 
288- 
289 

291 

292 
292 

294 

295 

296 

300 

301 
305 
30S 
312 

315 . 

317 

319 

320 
322 

324 

327 

329 

























CONTENTS. 


7 


Sphere of the Will . 

Analysis of the Will 

Motives. 

Choice. 

Kindred Topics. 

Freedom of the Will 
Strength of the Will 
Cultivation of the Will . 
General Summary . 


334 

335 
337 
339 

343 

344 

350 

351 


DUTY. 


Origin of Duty. 

Nobility of Duty .... 
Happiness in Fulfilling Duty . 
Analysis of Duty .... 
Theories of the Right . 

All Duties One. 

Diagram of Complete Analysis 


DUTIES TO SELF 


Self-Torture . 
Suicide 

Self-Defense . 

Intemperance 

Licentiousness 

Health 

Avarice 

Ambition , 

Anger . 

Jealousy . 

Independence 

Vanity 

False Honor . 
Hypocrisy 


and Servility 




355 

353 

360 

363 

366 

363 

369 

370 

371 
376 

378 

379 
382 

333 

384 

386 

388 

389 
39° 

396 

397 

398 


SELF-CULTURE.401 

Physical Culture .... 403 

Cultivation of the Mind . . 404 

Common Sense.406 

Knowledge.409 

Taste.421 

The Sensibilities .... 423 


The Will.424 

Perseverance.425 

Heroism.429 

In the Strife for Perfection . 433 

SELF KNOWLEDGE .... 437 

Industry.441 

Kindness to Animals . . . 460 

DUTIES TO OTHERS ... 470 

Analysis.471 

Honesty.472 

Honesty in Business . . . 473 

Honorable Shrewdness . . . 474 

An Equal Chance . . . .474 

Taking Advantage of Ignor¬ 
ance .475 

Pay as You Go.480 

Mental Honesty.482 

Universal Honesty .... 483 

Sympathy.485 

Gratitude.499 

Courtesy.502 

Politeness.509 

Truthfulness.515 

May we Ever Falsify? . . . 516 

Evil Speaking.520 

Flattery.524 

Exaggeration.524 

Charity.530 

When and How to Give . . 531 

Forgiveness and Tolerance . 536 

DUTIES IN THE RELATION¬ 
SHIPS OF HOME ... 543 

Lover and Sweetheart . . 54S 

Proper Choice of Persons . . 552 

Love.557 

Mutual Honesty.558 

Husband and Wife .... 565 

Fidelity and Honesty . . . 569 

Patience.572 

































8 


CONTENTS, 


Continued Affection . . . 573 

Sharing Cares and Joys . . 577 

Mutual Kindness . . . -579 

Duties of Parents and Chil¬ 
dren .581 

Education of Head and Heart 582 
Educating the Heart . . . 591 

Mutual Respect.611 

Discipline.613 


Mutual Love and Kindness . 615 

Duties of Brothers and Sis¬ 
ters .622 


Love and Unity.623 

Duties of Masters and Serv¬ 
ants .625 

Respect and Kindness of Em¬ 
ployers .627 

Obedience and Faithfulness . 629 

Honesty of Servants . . . 633 

Duties of Teachers and Pupils 
The Teacher’s Work . . . 635 

The Teacher and the Public . 642 

Character-Building .... 646 

Discipline.652 


Mutual Kindness and Respect 654 

DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT . 657 

Support in War.665 

Moral Support.668 

DUTIES TO THE CREATOR . 672 

THE WORLD OF WORK. 

Philosophy of Labor . . . 687 

First Questions .... 692 

Occupations of Mankind . . 695 

The Analysis.698 

The Agricultural Pursuits . 699 

Studies of Agricultural Life . 701 

Manufactures, Commerce and 

Mining.710 

The Learned Professions . 712 

Money Making . . . . . 718 

Nature and Use of Money . 719 

Aiding Influences. 

Successful Soliciting . . . 723 

Analysis of Solicitor’s Work . 726 

Honest Methods in Business . 737 

A Common Difficulty . . . 737 

CONCLUSION.742 


\ 












AND 



2gg) 


E are told that we live in an aee of 

o 

steam and electricity. We ride 
upon the iron steed which out- 
speeds the wind, and talk across 
any distance in flashes of lightning. 
Every art, every science, every branch of 
knowledge, is beaten in the mortar of cease¬ 
less investigation and burned in the crucible 
of human needs to yield every possible grain of 
aid in the strife for wealth, or fame, or luxury, 
or the sterling necessities of life. Such is 
“the living present.” Yet, amid all the hurry 
of our money-making, fast-living age, is there a single 
human being who never has a sober hour of reverie 
upon the mysteries of his own existence? An hour 
when the deepest questions of life and what life really 
is, present themselves for answer? Not one. 

The gayest of all the careless and apparently happy 
will sometimes come face to face with the stern 
thought, “ I cannot always remain so.” The clown 

jests even at death, but is some day struck dumb with 

9 













IO 


OBJECT AND SCOPE. 


the doubt of what may come after. The man or 
woman wrapped in the fitful dreams of wealth or ambi¬ 
tion, pauses at some moment and asks, “ Of what avail 
is it all?” They whose life is one long battle of toil, 
or privation, or pain, are asking, “Why is it so?” Even 
the little child comes with a grave face and a question 
whose answer would baffle the wisest. These queries 
must not, dare not be trifled with. They are the 
echoes of doubts, of faulty opinions, or discordant 
actions. Too few people ever learn to note the deep 
harmony that runs through the music of every proper 
and true human career. But science finds unison 
everywhere in each branch of Nature, and surely man’s 
nature, though the highest and most complex of all, is 
no exception. It has its center of gravity, its harmony 
of existence, to be easily known and understood by the 
earnest inquirer. 

These are the questions of the present moment, and 
the sluggard who neglects to solve them to-day will 
have their answers forced upon him by a relentless 
eternity too late to profit thereby. And whether it 
be the youth just beginning to turn the fresh leaves, or 
whether it be the aged who is casting up the accounts 
and balancing the last pages of the book, the proper 
understanding of himself, his own being, is the chief 
key to every doubt of that hour. 

As well from every business point of view, these 
questions are of vital importance. Upon their answers 
depends a person’s purpose in life. How can one be 
fully in earnest while having no well-defined purpose, 


OBJECT AND SCOPE. 


I I 

or while in doubt whether his chosen purpose is in 
harmony with his highest good? Yet a genuine ear¬ 
nestness is the necessary soul of success in every 
undertaking. These are most practical truths. 

Every great thinker whose labors have enlightened 
the world, has given some of his best thought to these 
questions, and the number of books that in some 
degree treat of these subjects has grown so large that 
none but scholars of abundant leisure can hope to 
examine them. Much of the best matter upon the 
science and philosophy of life is too abstract in thought 
and too learned in language for the common reader. 

And also, many books have been issued in recent 
years, full indeed of good, simple, plain advice, and 
excellent axioms, all true enough, but omitting the 
scientific basis beneath the truths. Each month the 
moon renews her slender horn, grows to a full splendor, 
and returns again to obscurity. Nobody disputes these 
regular occurrences, but the facts alone do not satisfy 
us; we must know why and how. The investigating 
spirit of humanity demands and needs to know all there 
is to know. 

These are some of the reasons for bringing out 
another book. It will be the aim of the book to 
give a thorough analysis of the human being, its com¬ 
ponent parts, its capacities, its motive forces, its weak¬ 
nesses, the laws of its motion and the mysteries of 
mind and spirit action so far as agreed upon by the 
best authorities. No efforts, however, will be made in 
the direction of finely drawn distinctions, or hair- 


OBJECT AND SCOPE. 


I 2 

splitting arguments upon disputed points. It is not 
believed that the general public can be best served 
by tracing all the minute paths of modern scientific 
research. The aim is rather to glean/the rich fields 
of thought and present the results for the ready use 
of every-day people, freed from the technicalities of 
science and suited to the wants of men and women 
who have the cares of business and daily life upon 
them. No pains nor expense has been spared in a 
most thorough consultation of standard authors, with 
the constant aim to make this a desirable hand-book 
for each human being in each separate “ To-day” of 
his life. 







* 


1 

Introduction. 



THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE. 


« IH 







=AN’S never-ceasing study of the problem of 
I existence has shown itself in a thousand 
different forms, and it will be both inter¬ 
im esting and profitable for our purpose to take 
a brief view of the history of this universal 
question. 

In all ages of the world, the attention of 
the wisest men has been attracted to the 
great problem of being: What am I ? Why 
am I here ? Whither do I go ? “ Know thy¬ 

self ” was inscribed upon the temple of Apollo 
at Delphi, in the sixth century before Christ. 
“ Look within,” wrote Antoninus, the great 
Stoic philosopher and emperor of Rome, in 
the second century after Christ. “The proper 
study of mankind is man,” sang the English poet, 
Alexander Pope, in the eighteenth century. Each 
successive thinker has reverently laid his answer at 
the feet of the Sphinx, and passed on into the “ un¬ 
discovered country,” and the problem still remains 
unsolved, the riddle still unguessed. From the time 
of the Hindu Rishi down to the time of Hegel and 

Fichte, and to the present moment, there has been no 

13 





















i4 


INTRODUCTION. 


generation that has not made its trial at unraveling 
the great mystery, that has not had its data and its 
theories, by means of which it thought that the longed- 
for solution would finally come. 

Man, finding himself placed here, his past and his 
future shut off from view by a veil as black and impene¬ 
trable as night, would gladly know what he is, what he 
must do, what is the standard he must attempt to 
reach. That is a question of the most vital and imme¬ 
diate importance to every one. Whence came I, and 
whither do I go, are queries which are interesting 
mainly for the light their answers would throw upon 
the present moment. My duty, that which lies nearest 
me — that would I know,, and know at once. Am I to 
live for the body, for the mind, or for the spirit, and in 
any case how shall I go about it? Widely varying 
answers have been given to these questions. 

THE ANSWER OF ANCIENT GREECE. 

The greatest festival of Greece was confined entirely 
to athletic sports,* and the winner of one of those 
games, crowned with his simple garland of wild olive, 
was the greatest man in Greece. Foreign states some¬ 
times solicited him to proclaim himself their citizen, 
that they might share his honor. He was brought 
home through a breach in the city walls, made for the 
purpose. Such a conqueror must not enter by the 
plebeian gates. In Athens he was rewarded by a 
public gift of five hundred drachmae — a large sum of 

* Grote’s History of Greece. 


THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE. 


15 


money in those times. In Sparta he was given the 
place of honor on the battle-field. Indeed, we have 
record of three cases where altars were built and sacri¬ 
fices offered to the victors of Olympia. Bodily strength 
and power was their ideal of perfect manhood. This 
was the answer given by ancient Greece. 

THE ANSWER OF THE MEDIAEVAL MONKS. 

Very different was the reply made by the Christian 
monks of the middle ages, who inflicted all manner of 
penance upon the body and mind, that thus their souls 
might be made more pure. As one example out of 
ten thousand that might be given, note the career of 
Simeon Stylites, a celebrated hermit, who lived from 
395 to 451. At the age of thirteen he abandoned his 
occupation of shepherd, and confined himself in a 
monastery. His term as novice was long and severe, 
and he “was repeatedly saved from pious suicide.” 
After the expiration of his noviciate, he went to a 
mountain, thirty or forty miles east of the city of 
Antioch, and there established his residence. He 
fastened himself with a heavy chain within a circle of 
stones, and gradually built higher the column upon 
which he lived, until it reached the elevation of sixty 
feet. Upon the summit of this column, sixty feet high, 
he lived for thirty years. Habit and exercise instructed 
him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear 
or giddiness, 'and successively assume the different 
postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an 
erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure - 


16 


INTRODUCTION. 


of a cross; but his most familiar practice was that of 
bending his meager skeleton from the forehead to the 
feet, and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve 
hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted 
from the endless count. The progress of an ulcer 
in his thigh might shorten, but it could not disturb, 
this celestial life; and the patient hermit expired with¬ 
out descending from his column. 

Successive crowds of pilgrims from Gaul and India 
saluted the divine pillar of Simeon ; the tribes of Sara¬ 
cens disputed in arms the honor of his benediction ; 
the queens of Arabia and Persia gratefully confessed 
his supernatural virtue; and the angelic hermit was 
consulted by the younger Theodosius, in the most 
important concerns of the church and state. His 
remains were transported from the mountain of Tele- 
nissa, by a solemn procession of the patriarch, the 
master-general of the east, six bishops, twenty-one 
counts or tribunes, and six thousand soldiers; and 
Antioch revered his bones, as her glorious ornament 
and impregnable defense. 

OTHER FORMS. 

But turning again to the beliefs of ancient origin, 
we find the Greek philosopher, Epicurus, teaching that 
the highest good is happiness — pleasure — both mental 
and physical, but chiefly the former. “ The virtuous 
man alone is able to attain the end described. The 
virtuous man will attain it without failure. Virtue, 
then, is the only possible and the perfectly sure way to 




THE PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE. I 7 

happiness.” That does pretty well, but we find some¬ 
thing better still. Plato’s idea was that the highest 
good consisted in the nearest possible approach to 
God. What a prospect that offers us! Nothing short 
of perfection ; divine strength, intelligence and good¬ 
ness. Plato defines man as “The hunter of truth.” 
Lessing somewhere says that if the Almighty, holding 
in his right hand Truth , and in his left, Search after 
Truth , were to proffer him whichever he were to 
request, in all humility, but without hesitation, he 
should choose Search after Truth. The race after 
truth and divine intelligence is indeed a grandly inspir¬ 
ing one, and many of the world’s great men have 
lived with satisfaction to themselves and benefit to 
their fellow beings, mainly guided by the light of this 
philosophy. 

More than twenty-three hundred years ago the 
Chinese philosopher, Confucius, lived and taught, and 
his wise sayings will be worthy of consideration 
through all the ages yet to come. 

Of still greater age are some other of the Oriental 
systems of belief. In the sacred writings of Buddhism 
are found many sentiments that would rank in the esti¬ 
mation of the refined thinker of the present age as 
truly sweet, and pure, and holy. 

THE ANSWER OF JESUS. 

About nineteen hundred years ago, there arose one 
whose labors have borne greater fruits than any of 

them, one who, if he be considered merely as a man, 
2 


i8 


INTRODUCTION. 


and laying aside all claims to divinity, was the most 
marvelous man of history. He was destined to com¬ 
mence anew upon the great world-problem, and for 
these eighteen and a half centuries that have elapsed 
since his death, the work has been progressing slowly 
and amid many discouragements and conflicts, often 
even amid defeats and backsets, upon the foundation 
which he laid. But out of each defeat it arose with 
added strength, and its growth still goes on. What 
is the central idea of this wonderful doctrine? 

The dying words of the eminent Sir James Mack¬ 
intosh were: “Jesus, love! — Jesus, love! — the same 
thing! ” Those words sound the key-note of Christ’s 
teachings; it was emphatically the gospel of love — 
“ For God so loved the world.” His life and His teach¬ 
ings point alike to love as the precious jewel of earth. 
Faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is 
love. In the course of ages this doctrine has become 
so familiar to us that we can scarcely realize its impor¬ 
tance ; but seen by the light of history, it looms up as 
the most momentous fact in the progress of the human 
race. To the intellectual Greeks all foreigners were 
barbarians; to the warlike Romans they were enemies ; 
to the ascetic Jews they were heathen; to the Chris¬ 
tian they are men and brothers, children of the same 
God. This gospel of love has broken the shackles off 
the slaves of Christendom; it has lessened the fre¬ 
quency and mitigated the horrors of war; it has built 
asylums for the infirm, hospitals for the sick, homes for 
the poor and friendless; it has filled the land with free 





THE ANSWER OF JESUS. 


J 9 


schools and colleges; it has raised woman from a con¬ 
dition little better than slavery, to be the friend and 
valued companion of man. And the spirit of this doc¬ 
trine still goes on, warming the hearts of men to deeds 
of brotherly kindness, and banishing strife, hatred and 
cruelty from the earth. 

MODERN ANSWERS. 

Although all nations have been wisest and happiest 
while holding to the purest and highest beliefs, yet 
there has been and still is a class of thinkers who, 
seeing that every nation or tribe of people in all his¬ 
tory has had some form of a solution of the problem of 
existence, and that no one has given universal satisfac¬ 
tion, have concluded that further pursuit of the subject 
is folly. They have been disgusted, because the masses 
of the less intelligent people have always followed their 
chosen teachers more or less blindly, and have done 
things because they felt that their doctrines command 
them to do so, instead of looking for the wisdom of the 
command and then obeying it because it was wise. 
Seeing that everything in nature comes about accord¬ 
ing to fixed rules, and that law seems to be supreme, 
they guess that Nature is her own law-maker, and that 
it is the part of wisdom to simply let Nature take 
her own course. But such stagnant doubt, combined 
with idleness of spirit, has proven least satisfactory of 
all, and by far the largest array of the intelligence 
of this day believes that the lesson of all Nature and 
history urges man forever onward and upward. 


20 


INTRODUCTION. 


“ What a piece of work is man ! how noble in rea¬ 
son ! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how 
express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in 
apprehension how like a God!” These lines from 
“ Hamlet” eloquently express the modern idea of man. 
The prevalent opinion in all Christian countries is that 
man is a wonderful triune being: a three in one: body, 
mind and spirit, each demanding the highest culture 
consistent with the welfare of the others. 

These questions and the study of them seem to 
grow with the advancement of humanity and to daily 
become more and more interwoven with the lives of all. 
They combine the ripest wisdom, the richest experience 
of the ages, and without expressing a preference for 
any one answer, we may draw from the study of the 
whole matter the following 

GENERAL IDEAS. 

1. Since man has always been engaged with his prob¬ 
lem, and is found in his best condition when pushing 
the inquiry to the noblest and grandest answer possi¬ 
ble, we may conclude that no ordinary career in life, 
pursuit, or end secured, can satisfy the innate cravings 
of the human heart. 

2. Because false views of life have frequently led 
the ignorant miserably astray, intelligent readers have 
become slow in accepting precepts not fully under¬ 
stood. They receive commands unwillingly when not 
accompanied with the why and wherefore. 

3. As a unity of plan is to be seen in all Nature, 


GENERAL IDEAS. 


21 


/ 


man’s study of himself grows more encouraging, for 
he may justly hope that every right rule of action will 
be found to be wisely and harmoniously based upon 
the true laws of human nature. 

4. Another powerful reason why man has so con¬ 
stantly turned to an examination of the elements of 
his own being is that in the commonest business under¬ 
takings of life a person needs to bring all the forces of 
his nature into play to accomplish his ends. This he 
cannot do if he is ignorant of them and their relative 
strength and importance. Even if a person had no 
great object in life to accomplish, he would need to 
be familiar with all the springs and motives of human 
nature that he might live in peaceful and sympathetic 
harmony with his fellow beings. 



V 




(he.ner.al Analysis of Iugqan Mature. 






J 


i 

9 r. 


ft 

F 


WHY THE ANALYSIS? 

F a man were contemplating a trip to France, 
he would probably desire to know, before 
landing in that country, as much as possible 
of its geography, history, customs, language 
and literature. Possessing a good general 
knowledge of all these things, what pleasure 
would be his in treading the classic soil of 
that beautiful land, almost every foot of 
which is rendered sacred by history. For 
him, the old castles that stand upon their 
lofty rocks and frown down upon this peace¬ 
ful age, would have stories to tell of the 
sterner and bloodier days when they were 
built. Every monastery that he entered 
would call up to mind : 

“Old legends of the monkish page, 

Traditions of the saint and sage, 

Tales that have the rime of age, 

And chronicles of eld.” 


The sunny valleys would re-echo to him the songs 
of all ages, from the Troubadours to Victor Hugo. 

Without this knowledge he would be in constant per- 

23 











































WHY THE ANALYSIS? 23 

• 

plexity and doubt. He would meet with things every 
day which he could not understand, and would wonder 
why people made so much ado over them. His trip 
would simply be a dry, profitless journey, and he would 
return home having seen, and yet not having seen: 
that is, having seen only the surface of things, which 
is frequently barren indeed. So, when a man is about 
to commence the study of any subject, he will wish to 
know the general lay of that subject, how much there 
is of it, how it is divided, where the landmarks are, etc. 
In short, the more general knowledge he has about it 
before he commences to study it in detail, the better 
will be his chances for a pleasant and profitable season 
of study. All this applies especially to the science of 
the nature of man, since clear ideas are of the utmost 
importance in any thorough work of this kind. 

A PLAN FOR THE ANALYSIS. 

In the trial-room of the manufactory stands a really 
wonderful machine. It is an improved grain-thresher, 
and we are to study the intricacies of its working, and 
fully master its every feature. Piece by piece we take 
it apart and note the shape, size and use of each. 
Every separate device is studied with reference to itself 
and its relation to its adjoining parts. One by one 
they are labeled and laid out in their proper order until 
the analysis is complete. 

At last, after days of studious toil, all is familiar. 
The parts now assume them places with the readiness 


24 


GENERAL ANALYSIS OF HUMAN NATURE. 


of trained soldiers. The last screw is fastened, and the 
machine acts smoothly and harmoniously as a thing of 
life. We now understand every part and every motion, 
and the machine becomes our faithful servant. 

As we studied the machine, so should we analyze 
and study every subject that presents itself. So the 
farmer studies what sort of crops he shall cultivate, 
the merchant what kind of goods will best please his 
customers, the doctor notes his patient’s symptoms, and 
the lawyer the various aspects of his case in hand. By 
the same mental process the school boy solves his ques¬ 
tion, and in like manner man’s nature will now be 
analyzed. 

In studying the grain-thresher, it was a great con¬ 
venience to have the belts all arranged together on one 
table and separately labeled; all the wheels and pulleys 
on another table, and all the shaftings on another; 
and it was well to have all the pieces concerned in hull¬ 
ing the grain marked with red labels; those concerned 
in cleaning it, blue labels, etc. Thus we much more 
easily learned the whole. 

In making a written analysis of any topic, we need 

i 

some arrangement to take the place of the tables and 
the labels. The brace system of analysis is simple, yet 
capable of great thoroughness. The subject under 
consideration is placed at the left hand, followed by a 
brace, j. All the leading parts or divisions of the 
subject are now written one above another at the right 
of the brace, and if desirable to subdivide any one of 
these parts, another brace is used at the right of it, and 





























































The Nature 
of Man. 


Frame-work, \ ^° u "^ es . 


Digestive 

System. 


Nutritive 

Apparatus. 


/•Bodily Natures 


Mouth. 

Teeth. 

Salivary Glands. 

(Esophagus. 

Stomach. 

Liver. 

Pancreas. 

Intestines. 


CirCU wX, J Arteries. 
System. -j Capillaries. 

[Veins. 

l Resp iratory J South. 
System. Air Tubes. 

{ Brain. [ Lungs. 

Spinal Cord. ( Mot j on 

Nerves.Of Sensation. 

f Eye. 

Ear. 

Skin. 

Mouth. 

Nose. 


Organs of the 

Five Senses. - 


/-Intuitive 


/Intellect. < 


Mind Nature. 


Power. - 


First Truths. - 


Intuitive 
. Conceptions. 


Personal Existence. 
Confidence in our Senses. 
Confidence in our Mental Pro 
Personal Identity. 

Adequate Causes. 

Uniformity of Nature. 

' Space. 

Time. 

Identity. 

Idea of the Beautiful and Sub 
. Idea of Right and Wrong. 


r sight. 

Presentative | Hearing. 

Power, i Touch. 

•• Taste. 

Representative , ^mory. j RecXctkm, 1 ?" , 

' ( Imagination. [Laws of Association. 

Reflective , Classification. [Deductive. 

Power, -j Reasoning ... 1 


' Prima 


[Seconr 

[Probable. | logy. 


/The Emotions. 


Sensibilities. < 


Rational. 


The Affections. - 


{ Cheerfulness or Melancholy. 
Sorrow at the Loss of Friends. 
Sympathy with Joy or Sorrow oft 

Self-Approval or Disapproval. 
Enjoyment of the Ludicrous. 
Surprise. 

Feeling of Reverence. 

Love of Husband and Wife. 

Love of Kindred. 

Love of Friends. 

Love of Benefactors. 

Love of Home and Country. 


Love. 


[Envy. 
Hate, j Jealousy. 
[ Revenge. 

Food. 


Animal. 


The Desires. 


Rest. 

Action. 

Sex. 


' Happiness. 
Knowledge. 
Power. 
Rational. Money. 

Superiority. 
Society. 
Esteem. 


When modified j 
by expectancy. ( t 


CWill. 


Necessary Conditions, j Doi^T 

The Act. | 


Choice. 

Volition Proper. 


[copyrighted, 18 









































Self-Torture. 
Suicide. 

r Protection of Body.-j 

Licentiousness. 
.Health. 


C Duties to Self. 


Self-Protection. 


Protection of Mind. - 


Avarice. 

Ambition. 

Anger. 

Jealousy. 

Independence and 
Vanity. [Servility. 
False Honor. 

. Hypocrisy. 


Self-Culture. 


Of the Body. 


.Of the Mind. 


Self-Knowledge. 
v Industry. 


'Common Sense. 
Knowledge. 
Taste. 

The Sensibilities. 
The Will. 
Perseverance. 

. Heroism. 


[Pay as You Go. 


Duties to Others. ^ 


[ness. 

[Honorable Shrewd- 

- [Honesty in Business.•{ Equal Chances. 

Honesty, -j Mental Honesty. 

[Universal Honesty. 

Sympathy. 

Gratitude. 

Pride and Insolence. 


Duties in the 
Relations 
of Home. 


_. j False Prid< 

Courtesy. ^ Politeness. 

{ May we ever Falsify. 

Evil Speaking. 

Exaggeration. 

rviot-j Where and How to Give. 

( Forgiveness and Mercy. 

[ Proper Choice of Persons. 
Of Lover and Sweetheart.-^ Love. 

[Mutual Honesty. 


Of Husband and Wife. - 


Of Parents and Children. 


Fidelity and Honesty. 
Patience. 

Continued Affection. 

Sharing Cares and Joys. 
Mutual Kindness. 

Education of Head and Heart. 
Mutual Respect. 

Discipline. 

Mutual Love and Kindness. 


m tj_ j c . , „ ( Forbearance and Kindness. 

Of Brothers and Sisters, j Loye and Unity . 

[Employers. 

[Respect andKindness of 

Of Masters and Servants. -! Obedience and Faithfulness. 

[Honesty of Employes. 


k Of Teachers and Pupils. 


'The Teacher’s Work. 
Character-Building. 

Discipline. 

.Mutual Kindness and Respect. 


[ Obedience. 

^ „ . j Financial Support. 

Duties to Government, j Support in 

[ Moral Support. 


Duties to the Creator. 



























i 

o 



1 


* 




/ 









































































A PLAN FOR THE ANALYSIS. 


2 5 


the process repeated. Here is an analysis of a familiar 
object, each brace being made large enough for its 
particular purpose : 


f Roots \ For SU PP° rt - 

OO LO< \ f i 

For nourishment. 


Tree. -< 


Body. 


" Dead bark. 

J Live bark. 

Sap-wood. 

^ Heart-wood. 


f Branch stems. 
Limbs. < Leaf stems. 

f Fruit stems. 


The whole subject is thus shown in parts, and the 
relation of each to each is seen at one glance. 

The analysis of man’s nature is here made complete 
for convenience, as it will be referred to in the pages 
following. In explanation of the use of the braces it 
should be said that, for instance, all the desires are 
included by a brace after them which points to hope 
and fear, because hope and fear are based wholly upoi? 
man’s desires. Expectancy is inserted because it is 
according to the certainty of attaining his desires that 
he hopes or fears. So duty is presented following the 
whole nature of man, as a natural result or outgrowth 
of that entire nature. The large brace preceding the 
word “ duty,” therefore embraces the entire structure 
of man, while the analysis of duty follows again at the 
right. (See the analysis.) 









HERE is but one temple in the 
world, and that is the body of man. 
Bending before man is a reverence 
done to this revelation in the flesh. 
We touch heaven when we lay our 
hand on a human body. 

Man was the last and most wonderful 
of all God’s creatures. From those 
created before him, he differs very much 
in degree, if not in kind. His is a 
wonderful three T fold nature—physical, 
mental, and spiritual, each part distinct 
and having its own special duties to per¬ 
form, yet all harmonious by working together, and 
forming a magnificent whole', the crowning glory of the 
universe. A full discussion of the physical nature does 
not fall within the design of the present book, but it 
is so intimately connected with the others that a few’ 
words regarding it are necessary. 


A COMPLICATED MACHINE. 

The human body is the most complicated machine 

ever devised; its intricacy is almost beyond belief, 

26 








































A COMPLICATED MACHINE. 


27 


Many of its parts are so small as to be entirely invisi¬ 
ble to the naked eye. The pores of the skin are 
extremely minute tubes, about one three-hundredth of 
an inch in diameter, and about one fourth of an inch 
in length. It is estimated that the number of pores 
in the body is about seven millions; this would make 
nearly twenty-eight miles of tube employed in conduct¬ 
ing the sweat to the surface. On an occasion of 
great solemnity, Pope Leo X. caused a young child to 
be completely covered with gold-leaf, closely applied 
to the skin, so as to represent, according to the idea 
of the age, the golden glory of an angel or seraph. In 
a few hours after contributing to the pageant of pride, 
the child died; the cause being simply that of stop¬ 
ping the exhalations of the skin. So important is even 
the apparently insignificant process of perspiration. 
There are other organs of the body whose functions the 
physiologists of two thousand years have been unable, 
to discover. Yet we may be assured that these parts, 
minute and obscure as they are, have their appropriate 
share of labor in the economy of the system, and that 
they will perform this labor with perfect ease and accu¬ 
racy, so long as they are not crippled by the short¬ 
sighted abuse of their master, the man. 



A brief analysis of the body, calling attention to* 
some of the more prominent parts, and the wonderful 
adaptations of means to ends, will follow. The first 
thing that attracts our attention in looking at anything- 


28 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


is its general shape, which is given it by its frame. The 
framework of the body is the bones and the muscles 
which play upon* them. No mechanical principle has 
been discovered, by which the bones could have been 
made stronger and better adapted to their purposes. 
The long bones are hollow, because a tube of given 
weight is stronger than a bar of the same weight. 
They are larger at the ends than at the center, in order 
that more space may be given for the attachment of 
muscles and ligaments. They are spongy at the ends, 
to prevent the enlargement from increasing the weight. 
The skull is composed of several bones, instead of one. 
Each of these are made of an outside and an inside 
plate, with a porous layer between them. The bones 
are united partially by dovetailing and partially by 
smooth edges. All of which, combined with its shape, 
reduces the danger of fracture to the least, gives room 
for growth, and affords the greatest strength united 
with the least weight. The spinal column is in the 
form of a compound curve, because that form is best 
adapted to deaden the force of shocks. If it were 
straight, a very slight fall would produce concussion of 
the brain. Moreover, the compound curve is the most 
beautiful figure known to art. The column is com¬ 
posed of twenty-four bones, separated by layers of a 
s p°ngy substance called cartilage, which arrangement 
gives great freedom and elasticity of movement. 

In the muscles we find the same marks of wisdom 
as in the bones. Each muscle is exactly fitted to its 
purpose. Some of those in the arms and fingers, for 


THE FRAME. 


2 9 


example, where celerity of movement is of more impor¬ 
tance than power, are so arranged as to give the great¬ 
est possible speed to those members, while others in 
the back and elsewhere are planned with reference 
to strength, speed being a minor consideration. A 
man can utter perhaps fifteen hundred letters in a 
minute, the utterance of each letter requiring a con¬ 
traction and a relaxation of the same muscle,— making 
a total of three thousand movements of one muscle in 
the short space of a minute. The muscles are usually 
attached to the bones by small cords called tendons, 
and so firmly that the bone will break rather than the 
tendon loosen from it. 

JIutritive Apparatus. 

But despite these wonderful adaptations, man’s body 
would, like any other machine, wear out in a short time 
if it were not continually being repaired and replen¬ 
ished. The body is constantly dying and being born. 
A particle dies, is carried away, and its place is taken 
by a live new particle, fresh from the human labora¬ 
tory. It is estimated that no particle which is in your 
system to-day will be there seven years hence. Some 
portions change much faster than that, as, for example, 
the finger-nails, which are completely renewed two or 
three times each year. This process of carrying off, 
renewing, and rebuilding, is carried on by the organs 
which are collectively known as the Nutritive Appa¬ 
ratus; of which there are three parts,— the Digestive 





30 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


System, the Respiratory System, and the Circulatory 
System. 

THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. 

The mouth takes the food the person has chosen, 
and holds it in position for the teeth to cut and grind 
it to a pulp. The salivary glands situated in the 
cheeks and under the tongue ooze out a fluid to 
moisten the mouth and mix with the food. Then the 
pulpy mass disappears down the oesophagus (com¬ 
monly called gullet), the passage which leads to the 
stomach. The stomach has a contracting motion which 
turns the food about and mixes it with the gastric juice, 
which is here supplied. Finally the now much changed 
food passes out of the stomach into the intestines, and 
at once mixes with the fluid furnished by the liver, 
being again changed by this and minor juices. Then, 
as the food passes slowly along, very small vessels 
which • open upon the inner surface of the intestines 
suck up the thoroughly digested food any carry it 
along in little canals. These canals open into each 
other and finally form one large canal which carries 
the fluid thus gathered up from the digested food and 
throws it into the large vein which carries it to the 
heart. Thus the work of the Digestive System is com¬ 
pleted and the food to be used by the body is turned 
over to the System of Circulation. 

THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM. 

The heart receives the blood coming from the body 
mixed with the fluid food coming from the Digestive 


THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM. 


3 * 


System, and sends the mixture to the lungs, whence, 
after important changes which will be explained in the 
Respiratory System, the blood now rich and pure is 
sent back to the heart. The blood is now sent out 
through the arteries, which divide, and sub-divide and 
carry it to all parts of the body. The arteries thus 
grow smaller and smaller, dividing themselves again 
and again, until every part of the body is supplied with 
blood and the arteries end in minute vessels called cap¬ 
illaries. The blood may now be said to ooze through 
the tissues, and it is here taken up by the veins which 
do not differ very greatly from the arteries, except that 
they run back toward the heart, increasing in size, and 
finally uniting in one canal and emptying the blood 
again into the heart. 

As the blood makes this grand circuit each member 
of the body takes up from it whatever it may need : 
the bone one element, the muscle another, the skin 
another, the nerve another, and so on to the end. 
And its tour is not only one of distribution, but one of 
collection as well, for it gathers up all the worn out 
particles which are to be expelled in various ways. 
The French have very nicely called this wondrous fluid 
“fluent flesh ,” because, though liquid, it contains all the 
principles which enter into the composition of the body. 
So perfectly is the blood distributed, that you cannot 
puncture your flesh anywhere with a needle, without 
wounding one of the minute blood-vessels. Another 

o 

thing that shows the wisdom and skill with which the 
body was contrived, is the fact that at least four 


/ 


32 BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 

mechanical principles are used in propelling the blood 
through the arteries and veins, whereas in machines of 
human invention, use is very rarely made of more than 
one at a time. The first of these is the compression 
of the heart, the working of which may easily be 
seen by a very simple experiment. Take a hollow 
rubber ball and fill it with water; then compress it and 
the water will, of course, fly out, because there is no 
place for it in the ball. The second is the principle 
which is known in physics as capillary attraction. It 
is this that causes a whole towel to become wet in a 
short time when one corner of it is dipped in water. 
The third is the rushing in of the blood to fill up the 
vacuum left in the heart when it is emptied after each 
compression. This is the same law that draws the 
water up in a suction pump. The fourth is the weight 
of the blood, which, of course, aids the circulation only 
in those parts of the body which are above the heart. 

THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM. 

It was seen that the blood came back to one of the 
four chambers of the heart from the various parts of 
the body, loaded with impurities. It had yielded many 
of its best elements to build up the body, and taken in 
the worn-out and useless matter, and its quantity had 
been increased by the fluid food thrown into it from 
the Digestive System. Now this mixture is not fit 
to go out to the body again at once. The load of 
impurities must be thrown off and it must undergo an 
important change. This change is effected by the 


THE RESPIRATORY SYSTEM. 


33 


Respiratory (or breathing) System. The lungs receive 
this mixture of impure blood and bring it into contact 
with the air. 

T he pure air we breathe is one fifth oxygen, and 
this oxygen is the substance needed to purify the 
blood. Partly through the mouth, but mainly through 
the nose, the air is drawn ; and passing down through 
the air-tubes (windpipe and its branches) it reaches all 
parts of the lungs. Here the walls of the little air- 
tubes and blood vessels are so thin that the impure 
gases of the blood pass through and unite with the air, 
while the oxygen passes into the blood, making it 
bright, red, and healthy. This air, now loaded with 
the impurities of the body is at once thrown out, and 
fresh air taken in. 

This is the business of the Respiratory System, and 
it is plainly seen why pure air and free breathing are so 
necessary to health and life. These operations in the 
lungs are very rapid. The quantity of blood estimated 
in the grown person is about twenty-eight pounds, 
which performs its circulation in two minutes and a 
half; or, in other words, the circulating velocity of this 
fluid is so great that any given amount, on leaving the 
lungs, is distributed to impart heat, health, and activity 
to the body, as well as to remove impurities, and in the 
short space of two minutes and a half it returns again 
to the lungs, laden with these impurities, having effect¬ 
ually accomplished its vital mission. 

Thus the digestive, the circulatory, and the respira¬ 
tory systems, acting hand in hand, perform the work of 


34 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


nutrition ; building up the body and keeping it supplied 
with nourishment. 



The Nervous System is not thoroughly understood, 
for the reason that its work cannot be seen, heard, 
tasted, or felt. It is'quite beyond the reach of sense, 
and can only be known by its effects. Accofding to 
the theory which now prevails throughout the scientific 
world, however, the nervous system is the organism 
through which the mind acts; it is the point of contact 
between the material and the immaterial. Just how 
the immaterial mind is enabled to work by means of 
the material brain, spinal cord, and nerves, is some¬ 
thing no man knows. It is thought that the brain and 
spinal cord are the seats of thought, sensation, and 
motion, and that the nerves, which are of two kinds, 
sensory and motory, carry communications between 
these organs and other parts of the body. The nerves 
are distributed to nearly all parts, the skin being espe¬ 
cially well supplied. The relative ease with which we 
feel external objects in different parts of the body has 
been determined by ascertaining the smallest distance 
of separation at which the points of a pair of needles 
could be felt as two. It is found that at the point 
of the tongue this distance is about one twenty-fourth 
part of an inch; at the end of the third finger, one 
twelfth of an inch ; on the lips, one sixth of an inch ; 
end of the nose, one fourth of an inch ; the cheek, 


NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


35 


the palm of the hand, and the end of the great toe, 
five twelfths of an inch; the knee and back of the foot, 
one and a half inches. 

The nerves of sense are supposed to communicate 
the state of affairs at their extremities with the brain. 
As, for instance, the accepted theory of sound is, 
that the vibrations of the air, when it is set in motion 
by any shock, strike the drum of the ear and produce 
corresponding vibrations there,,which are in some mys¬ 
terious way carried to the brain by the auditory nerve. 
In like manner, the optic nerve conveys the image of 
any object reflected upon the retina of the eye to the 
brain, and thus we see the object; and the nerves of 
touch, the sensations at their outer limits, and we say 
the thing touched is rough or smooth, hot or cold. 
The motories convey orders from the nerve centers 
outward. The mind wills that the arm shall move, and 
forthwith it moves. A man puts a berry into his 
mouth. The nerves of taste detect a peculiar flavor, 
and the berry is at once rejected through the opera¬ 
tions of the motories. The berry was rotten. This 
is an example of the immediate instinctive action of 
the nervous system. A more deliberate action of the 
same organs is to be found in every voluntary deed 
that we perform. The carpenter driving a nail is told 
by his optic nerve the exact location of the nail, and 
the motories carry orders to the arm to hit it; and the 
thing is done. The whole apparatus has been not 
inaptly compared to the telegraph system of a railway 
company. The nerve centers are the central office, 




BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


3 6 

and the nerves are the wires stretching out in every 
direction. The operator at the outer station sends in 
his report of the condition of affairs, and receives in 
return his instructions from the central office as to how 
he shall act. 

There are certain sets of nerves for certain branches 
of this work. One of the most important of these 
gives the life-force to all portions of the body. It is 
called the sympathetic, and exerts a controlling influ¬ 
ence over the final processes of digestion, secretion, 
circulation, and nutrition. Every portion of the body 
is to a certain extent under its influence, as threads 
from this system of nerves accompany the blood vessels 
throughout their course. An important use of these 
nerves is to form a direct line of communication between 
all parts of the body, so that one organ can become 
aware of the condition of every other organ, and act 
accordingly. If, for example, disease or injury strikes 
the brain, the stomach by its sympathetic connection 
knows it; and as nourishment would add to the disease, 
it refuses to receive food, and perhaps vomits out what 
has lately been taken. Loss of appetite in sickness is 
thus in most cases a kind provision of nature to prevent 
our taking food when it would be injurious. 

Then there are other sets of nerves which aid in the 
expression of all the passions, feelings, and emotions of 
the mind. When a person is greatly frightened we 
readily see the reason why he stands with his eyes 
intently fixed on the object of his fears, the eyebrows 
elevated and the eyeballs largely uncovered; or why 


NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


37 


his steps are hesitating 1 and bewildered, and his eyes 
rapidly and wildly searching something. These are the 
plain outward signs of the intense attention of his mind 
to the object of his fears; and show the powerful influ¬ 
ence of this mental action. When we observe him 
farther there is seen a spasm in his breast; he cannot 
breathe freely; the chest remains elevated, and his 
breathing is short and rapid ; there is a gasping and 
convulsive motion of his lips, a tremor on his hollow 
cheeks, a catching in his throat; his heart knocks at 
his ribs, but there is no force in the blood circulation, 
for the lips and cheeks are ashy pale. 

These nerves are the instruments of expression, 
from the smile upon the infant’s cheek to the last agony 
in death. It is when the strong man is subdued by 
this mysterious influence of spirit on body, and when 
the passions may be truly said to tear the heart, that 
we have the most afflicting picture of human frailty, and 
the most certain proof that it is the nerves we have 
been considering, that are thus affected. In the first 
struggle of the infant to draw breath, in the man recov¬ 
ering from a state of suffocation, and in the agony of 
passion, when the breast labors from the influence at 
the heart, the same set of parts is affected, the same 
nerves, the same muscles, and the same outward actions 
have a strict resemblance. How expressive is the face 
of man ! How clearly it announces the thoughts and 
sentiments of the mind! How well depicted are the 
passions on his countenance! Tumultuous rage, de¬ 
voted love, envy, hatred, grief, and every other emo- 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


38 

tion, in all their shades and varieties, are imprinted 
there, in characters so clear that he who runs may 
read! How difficult, nay, how impossible, is it to hide 
or falsify the expressions which indicate the internal 
feelings! Thus conscious guilt shrinks from detection, 
innocence declares its confidence, and hope shines out 
with bright expectation. 

Remembering, then, that the brain and nerves are 
the instruments of the thinking mind, and are also 
wound in with every process of life in the body, we can 
easily see the desirability of a well-balanced nervous 
system in a well-developed body. The points of weak¬ 
ness in such persons as Louis XV. of France, and the 
tremendous power and endurance of Napoleon Bona¬ 
parte, are evident. Neither is it difficult to understand 
how sudden excitement of the mind affects the body, 
causing great changes and sometimes death ; or how 
continued grief may produce disease; or how any line 
of conduct of the person or his associates which con¬ 
tinually disquiets his mind will gradually undermine 
the health. The old proverb, “ A clear conscience 
giveth sound sleep,” has indeed a scientific basis, and 
we cannot avoid seeing the vast importance of each 
human being living such a life as will give a moral 
feeling of satisfaction with himself and a hopeful trust 
in the future. 

Another fact must not be overlooked. These vari¬ 
ous parts of the nervous system grow in size and 
strength with frequent use, or dwindle, or weaken with 
idleness the same as any other part of the body. As 


NERVOUS SYSTEM. 


39 


the blacksmith’s arm grows large and strong with 
steady use, so these. The larger and stronger any 
set of nerves may be, the more readily and easily will 
the mind use that set of nerves. Children may thus 
inherit from parents tendencies to certain bodily or 
mental conditions or lines of conduct, and therein 
is also shown the vital importance of a wise and life¬ 
long education and training of the mind and personal 
habits. 


The Organs of Special Sense. 

There is no more striking evidence of thoughtful 
skill in the body than is to be found in the organs 
of the five special senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, 
and smell. There is no optical instrument known to 
science which will accommodate itself so perfectly to 
the varying demands made upon it as the eye. Its 
intricate combinations of lenses, coats, nerves and 
absorbents are so nicely adjusted that it sees equally 
objects in the distance and those close at hand, furnish¬ 
ing to the mind a faithful and living picture of external 
things. The ear, too, and the nose, the mouth, and 
the skin, are all so contrived as to fulfill perfectly the 
design of the Maker. Their workings are totally 
beyond the range of our conceptions. How, for 
instance, the mere vibrations of the air are transformed 
into sound, is something of which we cannot even form 
an idea. Yet it is so. “ More wonderful than any arch 
that ever sprung,” says Talmage, “or any transept 


40 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


window that ever illumed, or any Corinthian column 
that ever crowned, or any Gothic cluster that ever 
elaborated, is the human ear. Although the most 
skillful and assiduous physiologists of the ages have 
been busy in the study of its arches, its rotunda, its 
floors, its canals, its aqueducts, its vibrations, its 
convolutions, its intricacies, its resonance, it will take 
another thousand years to find what God did when He 
planned and executed the overmastering and infinite 
architecture of the human ear. The most of it is invis¬ 
ible to the human eye, and the microscope breaks down 
in its attempt at exploration. The cartilage which we 
call the ear is only the storm-door of the temple away 
down, hidden at the seat next door to the immortal 
soul. With all styles of ear specula, or magnifying 
glass, or reflector, scientists such as Helmholtz, and 
Corti, and De Blainville, and Hemen, and Ranke, and 
Buck have tried to walk the Appian way of the ear, 
but only two feet have ever traversed the myterious 
pathway — the foot of sound and the foot of God. 
There is a muscle which, by contracting, defends the 
ear against too loud noise, as the pupil of the eye 
contracts against too great light. The outer ear is 
defended by wax which, with its bitterness, discourages 
insects from entrance. The inside ear is imbedded in 
the hardest bone of the human system, a very rock of 
strength and defiance. The organ is capable of catch¬ 
ing, according to one scientist, a sound of seventy-three 
thousand seven hundred vibrations in a second. The 
outside ear, open to catch all sounds, whether crash of 



THE ORGANS OF SPECIAL SENSE. 


41 


avalanche or hum of bee, but the door at the other side 
of the ear shut against all intrusion, and henceforth 
communication must go in only by divine machinery. 
The sound admitted to the middle ear finds the door of 
that second apartment closed, and can only advance by 
divine mechanism. Having passed into the third ear 
and swum the liquid, it takes the fine rail track of 
brain, branches, and passes on into sensation, and there 
the curtain drops and the gates come shut, and the 
voice of God seems to say to all human inspection : 
"Thus far and no farther.’ In this vestibule of the 
soul’s palace how many kings of medicine and physi¬ 
ology have stood doing penance of study for a lifetime, 
and never got farther than the outward door of the 
vestibule! Mysterious home of reverberation and 
echo! ” 



If the delicate nerves of touch were exposed to 
immediate contact with the objects of the external 
world, we should be seriously inconvenienced by the 
pain that would follow almost every movement. To 
prevent this, and also to lessen the danger of disease 
from the absorption of poisonous substances, the body 
is covered with a tough membrane called cuticle — a 
layer of the skin. So also the principal office of the 
nails and the hair is to protect the organs beneath 
from various external influences which might work 
them harm. But here again, as always, several pur- 



42 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


poses are subserved by these organs. For instance, 
the nails, besides protecting the parts beneath and 
adding to the beauty of the hand, add greatly to the 
efficiency of the fingers in all operations requiring 
delicacy and fineness. 

We may now present a complete analysis of man’s 
bodily nature, as it has been here examined, showing 
at once all the parts and their relation to each other. 


r 


Frame-work . . . 



' Mouth. 
Teeth. 


Digestive Salivary Glands. 

System. (Esophagus. 


Stomach. 
Liver. 
w Intestines. 


Nutritive 


Heart. 

Arteries. 

Capillaries. 

Veins. 


Apparatus, j Circulatory 

1 


System. s 


Bodily 
Nature. 1 



Air Tubes. 
Lungs. 


Nervous 


Motion. 


Sensation. 


Organs of the Ear. 

Five Senses. Skin. 

I Mouth, 
f Nose. 


Protective 

Organs. ;. 















OBSERVATIONS. 


43 


Observations. 

The body is the foundation of the mind; and if the 
foundation be badly placed or poorly built, or if origi¬ 
nally good, it be allowed to deteriorate and become 
unsound, how can the house be a roomy, beautiful and 
safe structure ? The house itself may indeed be well 
constructed, but it will always be upon the verge of a 
ruinous fall. The writer not long since saw, in a cer¬ 
tain western city, a fine large mansion standing upon 
the top of a steep bluff. No one dared to use it, for 
the earth had crumbled away from its foundations. A 
large danger-signal was posted near it, and it stood 
there a suggestive picture of a man tottering to a 
physical wreck. 

EFFECT OF A DISEASED BODY. 

A sound mind in a diseased body is an anomaly, 
Sound intellect, sound physique, sound conscience — 
these three go hand in hand. The proper cultivation 
of each improves the other two. An unhealthy person 
is almost sure to be a peevish, childish one, worrying 
over every little obstacle that obstructs his pathway. 
It is almost impossible for such a one to perform 
bright, wholesome mental labor. 

HEALTH. 

“ Life is not to live, but to be well,” says the Latin 
poet Martial. “O blessed health!” exclaims Lawrence 
Sterne; “ thou art above all gold and treasure ; ’tis thou 


44 BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 

who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to 
receive instruction and to relish virtue. He that hath 
thee hath little more to wish for! and he that is so 
wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.” 
To the same purpose is the Arabian proverb: “He 
who has health has hope, and he who has hope has 
everything.” How often we hear successful, but hard- 
worked, business men in our large cities declare that 
they would be willing to give up all their riches, if by 
so doing they could only regain the health they 
enjoyed as boys upon a farm. 

EFFECT OF PHYSICAL CULTIVATION. 

If every man, woman and child who may chance to 
read these words could be persuaded to resolutely and 
persistently cultivate and care for his three selves, 
bodily, as well as mental and spiritual, using all, but 
abusing none, certainly at the end of a year he would 
feel himself to be a very much better, stronger, and 
more capable person. Nearly all of the men whose 
names are handed down to us as the leaders of their 
various times have carefully watched over the condi¬ 
tion of their bodies. Napoleon was an excellent 
sleeper, and he gave orders that he should never be 
disturbed at night by any good news, because it would 
interrupt his sleep and do much damage to himself and 
his management of the army. Longfellow took regular 
exercise, and when he died at the age of seventy-five 
years, he was as straight and vigorous as many a man 
twenty years his junior. It is said that one of the most 


EFFECT OF PHYSICAL CULTIVATION. 


45 


distinguished of our former presidents was accustomed 
to rise early in the morning and bathe in the Potomac 
before other people were out of bed. Goethe died 
when nearly eighty-three years old, a hale, hearty man, 
without “a trace of fat, or emaciation, or decay,” 
although he did more and better work than almost any 
other man of his century : all of which is to be attrib¬ 
uted principally to the excellent care he took of 
himself. He himself credited his great capacity for 
work to his equally great capacity for sleep. 

STRENGTH. 

A few examples of the wonderful power which the 
body attains when fully trained and developed, may 
not be uninteresting. Probably the most remarkable 
athlete the world ever saw, was the celebrated Greek, 
Milo. His great strength was gained by accustoming 
himself when young to bear burdens, gradually increas¬ 
ing their weight until he was able to sustain an enor¬ 
mous load. He was crowned victor at the Pythian 
games seven time, and at the Olympic six times, and 
only ceased to present himself when nobody would 
enter into a contest with him. The following are some 
of the feats he is said to have performed. “ He could 
hold a pomegranate in his hand, with his fingers closed 
over it, and yet, without either crushing or even press¬ 
ing on the fruit, could keep his fingers so firmly bent as 
to render it impossible for any one to take the fruit 
from him. * * * He could encircle his brow with a 

cord, and break this asunder by holding his breath and 


46 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


causing- the veins of his head to distend. He could 
hold his right arm behind his back, with the hand open 
and the thumb raised, and a man could not then 
separate his little finger from the rest. The account 
that is given of his voracity is almost incredible. He 
ate, it is said, every day, twenty pounds of animal food, 
twenty pounds of bread, and drank fifteen pints of 
wine. * * * One day, while attending the lectures 

of Pythagoras, of whom he was a disciple and constant 
hearer, the column which supported the ceiling of the 
hall where they were assembled wms observed to totter, 
whereupon Milo, upholding the entire superstructure 
by his own strength, allowed all present an opportunity 
of escaping, and then saved himself. * * * His 

death was a melancholy one. He was already well 
advanced in years, when, traversing a forest, he found 
a trunk of a tree partly cleft by wedges. Wishing to 
sever it entirely, he introduced his hands into the 
opening, and succeeded so far as to cause the wedges 
to fall out; but his strength here failing him, the 
separated parts on a sudden reunited, and his hands 
remained imprisoned in the cleft. In this situation he 
was devoured by wild beasts.” Ancient history and 
fable have furnished several other well-known examples 
of bodily strength, among them: Samson, the strong 
man of the bible ; Hercules and Achilles, the heroes of 
Greek poetry, and that sturdy old Roman, Horatius 
Codes who, with two companions, defended the bridge 
against a hostile army, until his comrades on the other 
side could hew it down, and then, severely wounded, 


STRENGTH. 


47 


leaped into the river with all his heavy armor on and 
swam safely to the opposite bank. All are familiar 
with the astonishing feats of modern gymnasts, men 
who perform all imaginable evolutions upon the trapeze 
and horizontal bar, toss cannon-balls about with appar¬ 
ently as much ease as if they weighed but a few 
ounces, put up hundred-pound dumb-bells as high as 
they can stretch their arms, and similar feats almost 
without limit. 

These examples show what can be accomplished 
by patient exercise, under favorable circumstances. Of 
course, all could not attain to so great a degree of 
physical power, because all have not the natural 
strength of constitution; nor, perhaps, would it be 
desirable, even if it were possible. But surely it is 
desirable for all,, and possible for nearly everyone, to 
cultivate his body to such an extent that it will be 
equal to all reasonable demands he may make upon it. 
With that sure basis to stand upon, the mind may 
hopefully venture upon the longest and most difficult 
tasks. 

CONCLUSION. 

Much has been said and written of the expressive¬ 
ness and dignity of man’s bodily form and carriage. 
Let us imagine a human figure as if now standing 
before us, like the statue of the Apollo, sculptured by 
the intellectual Greeks, representing him as gazing on 
the smitten Python. We seem to see in this statue 
the image of a man who aspired to be godlike. At 


4 3 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


length he stands triumphant over the temptation and 
the tempter, content in the feeling of a renewed and 
perfect humanity. 

Passion and intellect are blended in calm unison; 
knowledge and affection are at peace; the attributes 
of feeling, thought, and action, are combined in one 
attitude, expressive of the delicate yet mighty strength 
of a living spirit. The mind reigns in that body by 
the force of his will, and appears as if conscious of being 
always resisted yet never vanquished; but, inspired by 
a knowledge of his right as a prince of almightiness, 
he subdues resistance and surmounts difficulties by 
perseverance in the use of that strength which increases 
continually with every new victory. Such is man when 
sustained by the divinity which stirs within him ; the 
only creature on which the Creator has bestowed divine 
endowments. 

Even if we regard man in his most uncultivated 
condition, where the intellect is left to the freedom of 
the elements, and educated only by the forces of corpo¬ 
real necessity, we yet shall see much indication of his 
dignity. The wild barbarian awakes to action, and 
every movement speaks of thought. He is evidently 
influenced by a world within him, where reflection and 
anticipation present incessant business for his spirit, 
and he will not live in the solitude of his own precep- 
tions, but he seeks the higher pleasure of sociality and 
fellowship. His ideal existence is as actual as that of 
his body, and crowded with emotions. Memory and 
imagination people a world of their own, in the busy 


CONCLUSION. 


49 


scenes of which he dwells more thoroughly and inti¬ 
mately than in that which is present to his outward 
senses. And he reveals his inner life by living lan¬ 
guage. He talks of what he feels, not only in words, 
but also in the lineaments of his face, and while he 
speaks he stretches out his hand toward some object 
which may illustrate his words, or interest his com¬ 
panion, and thus by the very act of pointing, at once 
declares himself superior in endowment to every 
earthly creature, except his fellow-man; for no other 
holds rational discourse, or even possesses that simple 
adjunct to human intelligence, the power of distinctly 
and designedly pointing, to direct the attention of 
another. We say then that the existence of a resident 
and superintending mind, a thinking principle, an 
intelligent spirit operating upon the body, in it, not of 
it, might be inferred from the external form alone; and 
the manner of every movement and expression of that 
form proves how perfectly it was adapted for the use 
of a guiding and dominant spirit, pervading, informing 
and employing it. 

What is it that so skillfully touches this instrument ? 
What is it that enjoys as well as actuates, receives as 
well as communicates, through this inscrutable organ¬ 
ization ? It is the soul, or spirit, without which this 
body were more unmeaning than a statue, and only fit 
for the decay to which it would tend. It is the spirit 
which animates the features, and causes them to pre¬ 
sent a living picture of each passion, so that the inmost 
agitations of the heart become visible in a moment, and 
4 


50 


BODILY NATURE OF MAN. 


the wish that would seek concealment betrays its pres¬ 
ence and power in the vivid eye, while the blood kindles 
into crimson along the brow. It is this which diffuses 
a sweet serenity and rests upon the visage when our 
feelings are tranquilized, and our thoughts abide with 
heaven, like ocean in a calm, reflecting the peaceful 
glories of the cloudless skies. This indwelling spirit of 
power blends our features into unison and' harmony, 
and awakes “the music breathing from the face,” when 
in association with those we love, and heart answering 
to heart, we live in sympathy, while memory and hope 
repose alike in smiles upon the bosom of enjoyment. 
It is a flame from heaven, purer than Promethean fire, 
that vivifies and energizes the breathing form. It is 
an immaterial essence, a being that quickens matter 
and imparts life, sensation, motion, to the intricate 
framework of our bodies ; which wills when we act, 
attends when we perceive, looks into the past when we 
reflect, and not content with the present, leaps with 
all its aims and all its hopes into the futurity that is 
forever dawning upon it. 






GENERAL ji.N.flLYSIS OF THE 



IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL SCIENCE. 

HE importance of mental science, 
says Mr. Haven, appears from its 
relation to other sciences: we find 
in nature a gradually ascending 
series. As we pass from the ob¬ 
servation and study of the mineral to 
the forms of vegetable life, from the 
plant to the insect — and thence to the 
animal, in his various orders and classes, 
up to man, the highest type of animated 
existence on the earth, we are conscious 
of a progression in the rank and dignity 
of that which we contemplate. But it is 
only when we turn our attention from all these to the 
intelligence that dwells within the man, and makes him 
master and lord of this lower world, that we stand upon 
the summit of elevation and overlook the wide field of 
previous inquiry. Toward this all other sciences lead, 

as paths along the mountain side, starting at different 

51 

































52 


GENERAL ANALYSIS OF THE MIND. 


points and running in different directions, converge 
toward a common terminus at the summit. The min¬ 
eral, the plant, the insect, the animal, in all their curi¬ 
ous and wonderful organizations, are necessarily inferior 
to man ; and the science of them, however important 
and useful, is subordinate to the science of man him¬ 
self. So the human body, curious and wonderful in 
its organism and its laws, is nevertheless inferior in 
dignity and worth to the spirit that rules the body, and 
is the true lord of this fair castle and this wide and 
beautiful domain; and the science of the body, its 
mechanism, its chemistry, its anatomy, its laws, is 
inferior to the science of the mind, the divinity that 
dwells within. 

PRESENT PURPOSE. 

It shall be our endeavor to treat of the science of 
mind in such a way that even the untrained intellect 
can find no difficulty in comprehending the meaning. 
It is believed that this is within the range of possibili¬ 
ties, and that the technical wording usually employed 
in books upon the subject may be easily simplified at 
least in all the practical and important divisions of 
mental science. 

THEORIES. 

The thousand theories that have been advanced by 
thinkers from the earliest times to the present, how¬ 
ever interesting to scholars, are of little practical 
importance to the common reader seeking information 
concerning himself and his mental nature. When the 


THEORIES. 


53 


cabinet-maker takes up a piece of wood, he does not 
speculate upon the atoms which may or may not com¬ 
pose it, or upon the origin of it and the reason of its 
existence, or upon what will become of it when it shall 
have passed out of its present state. All he cares 
particularly to know is, that the wood is hard, that it 
is straight-grained and can be easily worked up, that it 
is susceptible of a high polish, and can be utilized in 
making a useful and ornamental piece of furniture for 
some one’s parlor. He wants to know the attributes 
of it, and not its ultimate nature (a thing which nobody 
knows). So in regard to himself, the inquiring person 
wants to know that he has will-power, reason, memory, 
that there is something in him which is impressed by 
whatever is beautiful or sublime, that there is another 
something in his nature which takes cognizance of the 
good and the bad. And finally, it is of the utmost 
importance that he should know of what utility these 
manifold faculties and capabilities are : that he should 
know how to use and improve them, and to raise him¬ 
self higher in the scale of being by means of them. 

DIFFICULTY. 

Owing to the invisibleness of mental actions, they 
are much more difficult to comprehend and classify, 
than those of the several physical sciences, where most 
things are open to examination by means of the five 
senses. Still, a little thought will enable us to divide 
all mental processes into three great divisions. The 
subdivisions will not always be quite so easy. 


54 


GENERAL ANALYSIS OF THE MIND. 


*1he Analysis. 

Suppose I am listening to a public speaker. I hear 
him, I comprehend the thoughts to which he gives 
utterance, I judge of their truth or falsity; these 
thoughts excite other thoughts in me; I reflect upon 
what he is saying. All these are acts of the Intellect. 
But they are not the only acts of which I am con¬ 
scious. The speaker is eloquent; in glowing terms he 
denounces a certain line of conduct, and holds another 
up to admiration; I am moved, as we say, or affected, 
by what he says; I grow excited, my blood runs faster, 
and my whole being feels the exhilarating effect of the 
speaker’s eloquence. This is feeling, and the general 
faculty of the mind in which it originates, is called Sen¬ 
sibility. Nor is this yet all. Spurred on by what the 
orator has said, or better, by the feelings he has 
excited, I resolve to do certain things, to pursue a 
certain course. The power which thus enables me to 
resolve is called the Will. It will be found upon 
reflection, that all the manifold kinds of mental activity 
of which we are capable may be reduced to one or 
another of these three general classes : i. Those of 
the Intellect. 2. Those of the Sensibility. 3. Those 
of the Will. 

ANOTHER CLASSIFICATION. 

This is what is known in metaphysics as a subjective 
classification. There is another, corresponding to it, 
called an objective. It divides the qualities belonging 


ANOTHER CLASSIFICATION. 


55 


to objects which call forth the activity of the mind into 
three classes: The true , the beautiful ., and the good. 
Intellect deals with the truth or falsity of objects; Sen¬ 
sibility, with their beauty or ugliness; and Will with 
their goodness or badness. For our purpose the 
former classification is best suited, and our first divis¬ 
ions of the Mind are now presented. The small brace 
standing at the end of a word, as is seen in this 
analysis, is used to show that the subject so indicated 
is to be still further analyzed, or subdivided, in the 
pages following: 


r The Intellect.-j—. 


The Mind, or 
Mental Nature. 



i 


The Sensibilities.-j—. 


The Will.]—. 


These three divisions will each receive separate 
attention. 



i 







I 


f he Intellect. 


fc 


v / 



FIRST QUESTIONS. 

EFORE we proceed to discuss the 
distinct faculties of the intellect, 
there are a few other matters which 
demand our attention. They are 
Consciousness, Attention, and the 
Continuousness of Mind’s Activity. 

CONSCIOUSNESS. 

Whether or not we are conscious of every¬ 
thing that passes within our minds is the 
subject of a dispute among the philosophers, 
there being celebrated men ranged on either 
side of the controversy. Those who claim 
that we are not always conscious of what is 
passing in our minds, base their arguments on cases 
like the following. A man will walk, avoiding all 
obstructions, making all necessary turns, etc., and at 
the same time be talking, reading, or meditating upon 

some subject, and apparently paying no attention to 

56 








































CONSCIOUSNESS. 


57 


the act of walking. A skillful piano-player will with no 
seeming thought play a piece, even a piece of some 
difficulty, and at the same time keep up a running 
conversation with persons in the room. One case is 
mentioned, of a young lady who performed before 
her tutor a long and very difficult piece with perfect 
accuracy, but seemed very much agitated during the 
whole performance, and at its close burst into tears. 
She had been absorbed all along in the death-agonies 
of a favorite canary bird. A short-hand reporter in the 
English House of Lords had been engaged for several 
hours in taking the depositions of the witnesses in an 
important case, when finally, overcome by weariness, he 
sank for a few moments into a state of unconsciousness, 
yet continued to take the report of the words as they 
were spoken. When he read his report over he had 
no recollection of the lines written during this time, 
though they were written as legibly and accurately 
as any other portion. It frequently occurs, that when 
a person is reading, perhaps aloud, his attention is 
attracted by some particular thought and he will follow 
up this new train of ideas, and yet be reading with 
perfect accuracy and distinctness all the while. And 
coming back to his book, he finds that he has lost all 
connection, and that a space of several lines or pages is 
to him as if he had never read it. Sometimes even, a 
person falls asleep reading, and passes through the 
same experience. An English mail-carrier, a portion 
of whose journey lay through a meadow, was accus¬ 
tomed to travel this distance asleep, but invariably 


58 


THE INTELLECT. 


awoke when approaching a certain foot-bridge. It is 
well known that upon long marches, foot-soldiers fre¬ 
quently sleep and still keep their places in the ranks, 
and cavalry-men often sleep in their saddles. 

These points are answered by those who believe in 
the uniform self-consciousness of mind, as follows: i. 
Such actions as walking, reading aloud and playing 
on a musical instrument, become after sufficient prac¬ 
tice, almost, if not wholly, automatic; that is, they, as 
it were, perform themselves. The mind has nothing 
to do with them more than simply to start and stop 
them. It is said that Franz Liszt, the great pianist, sits 
down daily at his instrument, and for several hours 
practices the scales, at the same time reading from a 
book placed upon the music rack before him. He 
claims that the fingering has by long practice become 
entirely automatic, and does not require any attention 
at all. I will, say they, to go to my dinner; the mind 
starts the body. I pass along the crowded street, 
turning aside and avoiding people, climbing steps, or 
whatever else may be necessary, taking no especial 
thought about the matter, unless something unusual 
should transpire, until I reach my destination. My 
body moves itself by force of habit, much as a wheel, 
when put in motion, will revolve for a while without 
the application of any more power to it. 2. The 
fact that the short-hand reporter could not afterward 
recollect what had transpired during the period of 
so-called unconsciousness, does not necessarily indicate 
that he really had no consciousness of the events at 


CONSCIOUSNESS. 


59 


the time. The fault is in the memory, rather than in 
the consciousness. The acts performed in taking the 
report, if, indeed, they were not quite automatic, were 
nearly enough so that they made but a very faint 
impression upon the weary brain, so faint that they 
could not afterward be recollected. These are the 
arguments pro and con ; as to which is the true opin¬ 
ion, it is, perhaps, safest to conclude that self-conscious¬ 
ness never entirely ceases. 

\ 

ATTENTION. 

The word attention signifies the power which the 
mind has of voluntarily giving heed to some particular 

object, to the exclusion of others. It is also used with 

\ 

the same meaning as “heed” in the last sentence. It 
is one of the most important functions of the Will, but 
must be briefly mentioned here, as it enters into so 
many of the mind’s working powers. Its operations 
are so well known that they scarcely need illustration. 
One or two examples of its effects, however, will be 
given. I walk along the street and meet hundreds of 
people. I pay no attention to them, and I should not 
recognize one of them if I were to see him three min¬ 
utes later. Suddenly my attention is attracted in some 
way to a person I am about to meet. I notice him, 
scan his form and features. I shall know that man 
wherever and whenever I may see him in the future. 
Two men sit in the reading-room of a large public 
library, reading: The one has cultivated his power 
of attention, the other has not. The former reads 


6o 


THE INTELLECT. 


steadily, heeding not his surroundings; presently he 
gets through with his book or article and knows all 
that is in it. The latter spends half the time in lookr 
ing around the room to see what other people are 
doing, and gains no profit whatever from his reading. 

It will be seen that the power of attention is the 
very basis of all sound intellectual character. It, more 
than any other one thing, distinguishes the thorough, 
cultivated student from the listless, careless reader who 
knows not what he reads. It is what gives the general, 
amid all the distraction and confusion of a great battle, 
the power to sit quietly upon his horse and dictate 
dispatches and orders so carefully worded that they 
cannot be mistaken. How important this is, is evb 
denced by the various battles which have been lost, 
or where great and needless slaughter has taken place, 
merely because an order has been misunderstood by 
somebody. It is what enables the business man, sur¬ 
rounded by the bustle of factory, store, or office, to 
write clear-headed letters, or mature his plans for future 
action. Without this power there is little hope for 
success in any sphere of life. A man must be able to 
think coolly and accurately, surrounded by all manner 
of distracting circumstances, if he would rise to higher 
planes of existence — nay, if he would even maintain 
his present condition. 

CONTINUOUSNESS OF THE MIND’S ACTIVITY. 

Does the mind ever absolutely cease working ? It 
is an interesting question, and one often asked. It has, 



CONTINUOUSNESS OF THE MIND’S ACTIVITY. 61 

of course, its seasons of great exertion, and its seasons 
of comparative inactivity; but, that it ever gives itself 
entirely up to rest, is scarcely to be believed. Doubt¬ 
less it is in sleep that it makes its nearest approach to 
* absolute rest, but there are many facts which go to 
prove that even then its quiet is not perfect. -The only 
reason we have for supposing our brains to be inactive 
during sleep, is that we cannot generally recall our 
thoughts after we waken. But does that furnish any 
substantial grounds for such a conclusion ? Is it not 
often impossible for us to remember what we have 
been thinking about an hour or two before? We 
know that we have been occupied with a delicious 
reverie, have been actively thinking all the time, and 
thousands of ideas have thronged the chambers of our 
brains. But what were those ideas ? What was the 
nature of that reverie? We cannot remember; it has 
all slipped away from our grasp. Our inability to 
remember is then no proof that we have not thought. 
What positive proof is there that we have thought ? 
All the phenomena of dreams are evidence to that 
effect. We often know after wakening that we have 
dreamed, and can recall the substance of them. Often 
we are conscious of having dreamt, but upon what 
subject we do not know. And again, sometimes we 
are unable to recollect dreaming at all, though it is 
known to others that we have had the most violent 
of nightmares. Somnambulists, or sleep-walkers, are 
rarely able to remember that they have been out of 
bed, or had anything but the most peaceful sleep; and 


62 


THE INTELLECT. 


yet they may have climbed to the roofs of houses and 
walked in the most dangerous places, or they may 
have fought duels, or solved problems, or written 
speeches, or painted pictures, during their sleep. 
Again, you may tickle or otherwise disturb a sleep¬ 
ing perso-n and he will probably move, and even 
groan and mutter something, showing that his mind 
is cognizant of what is going on. Yet he will not 
waken, and when he does awake of his own accord, 
he will not have the faintest recollection of what has 
occurred. From all these facts we conclude that the 
mind is never entirely at rest, but toils or sports 
ceaselessly from birth till death. 





















Analysis of the Intellect. 


S we shall deal with the Intellect first, it will 
be well to subdivide its powers at this point. 
Conditional to all mental activity are certain 
things which are classed together under the 
head of Intuition, because they are native, 
intuitive — not derived from observation or 
reflection. Such, for example, is the confi¬ 
dence which we have in the testimony of our 
five senses. If a man did not believe that 
things were as he saw them, his mind could 
not act upon the things seen. Or, again, if he 
had no confidence in his mental operations, of 
what value would all his thinking be to him ? 
He could base no practical actions upon it. 

It would be of no use to toil for the acqui¬ 
sition of knowledge, for he never could be sure that his 
memory was not playing him false. There is also 
man’s natural confidence in the fact that he exists, and 
several other primary qualities of mind going to make 
up Intuition, which will be the first element (see dia¬ 
gram, page 65) of the Intellect treated. 

There are things about us in the external world — 

hills, streams, woods, houses, birds, flowers, trees, all 

sorts of things. Of the presence of all these we 

63 




















64 


ANALYSIS OF THE INTELLECT. 


become aware by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or 
smelling them. This, then, is the first power of the 
Intellect; we will call it the power of Presentation, 
because it presents to the notice of the mind every¬ 
thing external that comes to it at all. 

A thing which has once been before the mind in any 
way is remembered, and can frequently be recalled at 
pleasure, can be recollected, can be represented to the 
mind. But not only can actual existing things of which 
the mind has at some time been cognizant be thus 
represented, but we may also represent to ourselves 
ideal things and scenes which never had existence. 
For example, I may imagine that I see before me a 
form of the most radiant loveliness, the like of which 
I never saw. This power of representing to ourselves 
things which are absent is called Representation. This 
power of re-presenting actual things to the mind is 
memory; that of ideal (imaginary) things is imagina¬ 
tion. The study of these branches of Representation, 

i 

however, belongs in future pages. 

Again, we have the power of thinking over the 
objects presented or represented to the mind, reflect¬ 
ing upon them, analyzing them, classifying them, 
comparing them, and deducing conclusions from the 
relations which they sustain to one another. This 
faculty we will call the power of Reflection. 

The four faculties just described, namely, Intuition, 
Presentation, Representation, Reflection, constitute the 
intellectual powers of man. It takes both Sensibilities - 
(heart-feelings) and Will to make up the complete 





ANALYSIS OF THE INTELLECT. 


65 


mind, but by intellectual powers is meant the knowing, 
thinking, reasoning powers of the mind. To see, to 
know, to judge, these are the things to be done by the 
powers of Intuition, Presentation, Representation and 
Reflection. 

Result of the foregoing examinations, expressed in 
tabular form : 


Power of Intuition, j —. 


Intellect. < 


Power of Presentation.-j—. 


Power of Representation. 


Memory, j —. 
Imagination 


^ Power of Reflection.-j—. 


The other two divisions of man’s mental nature, 
Sensibilities and Will, will be examined in their order. 
In the subdivisions of some of these we will tread 
upon ground that is full of by-paths disputed by per¬ 
sons whose beliefs vary all the way from nihilism (a 
belief in no thing as certain) and materialism to those 
who hold what religious people call strict orthodox 
views. Nothing could be farther from our purpose 
than to enter upon these paths, and it must also be 
remembered by the reader at all times that, as has 
been said in the earlier pages of the work, it is not 
intended to enter into minute philosophical discussions. 
The aim of these studies is to present a method as 
thorough and complete as the best researches will 

afford, but at the same time simple enough to be 
5 





66 


ANALYSIS OF THE INTELLECT. 


practical for common use by even uneducated per¬ 
sons. A very large majority of American readers 
have not had the privileges of a college training, yet 
their lives are just as precious, and they are as deeply 
interested in their own personal welfare as any one. 
Indeed, they represent the mass of the people, the 
real force of the world, and it is for these earnest 
seekers after a fuller knowledge of their own natural 
powers and elements of character that this book is 
intended. 

A complete analysis of the Intellect is presented 
here. 


v 


r Intuitive 

Power.“ 


' First Truths. - 


Personal Existence. 

Confidence in our Senses. 
Confidence in our Mental Processes. 
Personal Identity. 

Adequate Causes. 

Uniformity of Nature. 


Intuitive 

Conceptions. 


E- 

CJ 

fd 

.J 

W 

H 

£ 




Presentative 

Power. 


' Sight. 
Hearing. 
- Touch. 
Taste. 

. Smell. 


Representative 

Power. 

^.Reflective 

Power. 


Memory. 

Imagination. 

Classification. 
Reasoning.... 


' Space. 

Time. 

■ Identity. 

Idea of the Beautiful and Sublime. 
. Idea of Right and Wrong. 


' Primary. 


' Memory Proper. 

- Recollection, or 
„ Laws of Association. 


Deductive. 
. Probab e. 


.Secondary. 
Inductive. 

From Analogy. 


' Resemblance. 
Contrast. 

- Nearness of 
Time or Place. 

. Cause and Effect. 

Attention. 
Lapse of Time. 
Constitutional 
Differences. 
Professional 
Differences. 
. Repetition. 















Intuition. 



E derive most of our conceptions, and most oi 
our knowledge of facts and principles, from 
observation and subsequent thought. The 
five senses are, as will be shown, the avenues 
through which far the greater part of what 
we know comes to us, directly or indirectly. 
Still, there are some truths or principles 
which lie below all thought and observa¬ 
tion, without which no process of reasoning 
could be constructed. The existence of some of these 
truths has been denied by a few authorities, and their 
origin has been disputed over by others. They have, 
however, been very generally admitted to be true, and 
have been credited to Intuition (see analysis, page 73) 
as their source. That is, they have been regarded as 
native to us, born with us, and not dependent upon 
thought, experience, or anything else. Some of the 
tests by which these first truths, as they are called, may 
be distinguished from other truths, are these: they 
are universally believed and acted upon by sane people ; 
they can be neither proved nor disproved by processes 
of reason, for there is nothing ntore manifestly true 
than themselves; even those who deny them in 
theory, act upon them in practice; the opposites of 



67 

























68 


INTUITION. 


them are absurd. They appear early in life, before the 
cultivation of the reason. “We comprehend that the 
thing is, but not how or why it is.” 

PERSONAL EXISTENCE. 

When we see anything, we are aware, not only of 
the object, but also of ourselves as seeing it. If we 
touch a desk with our fingers, we not only feel the 
desk, but we feel also that we have fingers which 
touched it. When we remember a fact in history, we 
are conscious of a mind which does the remembering, 
as well as of the fact remembered. Thus we know 
that we do really exist and have minds and bodies, and 
no amount of sophistical reasoning can convince us 
to the contrary. 

CONFIDENCE IN OUR SENSES. 

There was once widely prevalent among philoso¬ 
phers the doctrine that nothing but mind exists ; that 
the tree which affords me protection against the burn¬ 
ing rays of the sun, the house in which I live, the sky 
and stars above me, the earth upon which I tread, nay, 
my own body even, are illusions ; that they have no 
real existence, but are only conceptions of the mind. 
Surely no sensible man ever believed such a ridiculous 
doctrine—practically believed it, I mean. Else why 
did these very philosophers write books on non-exist¬ 
ent paper for non-existent eyes belonging to non-exist¬ 
ent people, to read ? Why did they take in pay for 
the books imaginary money, wherewith they might buy 



CONFIDENCE IN OUR SENSES. 


69 


imaginary clothes to cover imaginary bodies, or imagi¬ 
nary food to feed those same bodies which were not ? 
Why does a man who has no existence love his child, 
which also does not exist? No; we do exist, and the 
trees, and the earth, and the ocean, and sky, and all 
the other material things we see about us also exist, 
although we cannot prove it, except by the evidence of 
the senses. It is a fundamental fact, then, than which 
nothing is truer, that our senses, sight, hearing, touch, 
etc., are reliable and must be depended upon. 

CONFIDENCE IN OUR MENTAL PROCESSES. 

Another of these primary truths is that our mental 
processes are reliable. If, for example, I remember a 
thing as having taken place, I have all confidence that 
it did take place just as remembered. If certain data 
are given, and from them I draw a conclusion, I must 
believe that conclusion to be involved in the data. It 
is very difficult, and rightly so, to convince any one 
that the actions of his mind have in any way been 
incorrect. 

PERSONAL IDENTITY. 

It is estimated that the body is entirely renewed 
once in about seven years, and along with other parts 
of the body, the brain changes. Still, there is a mys¬ 
terious something, which, in spite of these changes, 
preserves our identity. It would do no one any good 
to tell us that we are not the same persons that we 
were ten years ago, for notwithstanding all arguments. 


70 


INTELLECT. 


however cogently reasoned, and notwithstanding all 
these visible external changes, we feel and know that 
we are still the same. If a man injured me ten years 
ago, and I desired revenge, I should hardly be deterred 
from taking revenge by the consideration that no 
particle of what was his body at that time now existed 
in the same form, and that my own system had under¬ 
gone similiar changes. I should probably act at once 
upon my conviction that he and I were both the same 
individuals that we were at the time the injury was 
committed. It is in accordance with the same principle 
that we make preparations for the future; but for this, 
there would be no need of such things as prudence and 
foresight I believe that I am the same identical 
person, today, tomorrow, always. 

ADEQUATE CAUSES. 

It is a principle of universal application that every 
effect must have had a cause, and that every cause will 
have an effect. The things in this world are linked 
together in great chains, of which each individual link is 
both a cause and an effect, and is connected on the one 
hand with its own cause, and on the other with its own 
effect. Therefore, whenever we see anything, or learn 
of any event, we immediately conclude that it must 
have had a cause, and furthermore, that it must have 
had an adequate cause. To use the words of another, 
“We infer the skill of one workman from works indi- 
eating skill, and the vigor of another from works indi¬ 
cating strength. We infer from every work, not only 


ADEQUATE CAUSES. 


7 1 


a cause, but a cause which, in both degree and kind, is 
exactly proportioned to the effect produced. From a 
chronometer which varies only a second in a year, we 
infer exquisite skill in the artist; and from the con¬ 
struction of the pyramids of Egypt, the united strength 
of a multitude of men. We never supposed for a 
moment that the minute skill of the artist raised the 
pyramid, or that the united force of the multitude con¬ 
structed the chronometer; still less, that these monu¬ 
ments of art started into their present condition with¬ 
out a cause. We infer with absolute certainty in both 
cases an adequate cause; that is, a cause distinguished 
in the one case by design and mechanical power, in the 
other, by design, adaptation and exquisite skill.” 

UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 

We feel absolutely sure that Nature is uniform in 
all that she does. Like causes, under like circum¬ 
stances, always produce like effects. Having learned 
that alcohol has certain properties, as, for example, 
that it is a preservative, and that it will intoxicate, 
whenever I see a fluid which from its general appear¬ 
ance I know to be alcohol, I conclude at once, without 
experimenting with it, that this fluid has all the proper¬ 
ties which I have before discovered to belong to alco¬ 
hol. Knowing that in past years January has been cold 
and July hot, I feel perfectly justified in predicting that 
next year, and the year after, January will be cold and 
July will be hot. It is from his belief in this princi¬ 
ple that the farmer throws good seed into the ground— 


72 


INTELLECT. 


an apparent waste. Relying upon this principle the 
carpenter drives nails into wood, the smith heats two 
pieces of iron and hammers them together, the mason 
lays one stone upon another, the sailor trusts his life 
to his vessel. In fact, our every action is based in 
greater or less degree upon this principle, that the 
actions of nature are uniform. 

When we take into view a large scope, many things 
which ordinarily seem to us to be entirely accidental 
and unregulated, are seen to be uniform and regular. 
We have no means of calculating the age at which a 
certain person will die; yet we can tell the average age 
at which a thousand persons will die very accurately. It 
has even been shown that the number of suicides can 
be very closely approximated, as the rate of suicides is 
quite uniform. It is impossible to foresee how many of 
the children of a certain family will be males and how 
many females; yet in a large population, as that of a 
city, the proportion of males and females varies but 
little, being the same from generation to generation. 
If a man is known to have been always strictly honest, 
the chances are a hundred to one that he will be honest 
in a given future contingency. Such is our confidence 
in the uniformity of Nature. These six subjects: per¬ 
sonal existence, confidence in our senses, confidence in 
our mental processes, personal identity, adequate 
causes, and uniformity of nature, may be classed as 
one branch of the Intuitive Power under the name of 
First Truths. (See analysis, next page.) 





INTUITIVE CONCEPTIONS. 


73 


Intuitive Conceptions. 

Besides these primary truths, there are certain con¬ 
ceptions which seem to differ somewhat from all others, 
and which have been attributed to intuition, and will be 
classed as Intuitive Conceptions. Such are the con¬ 
ceptions of space, time and identity. There are ideas 
necessary to our knowledge of the existence and dura¬ 
tion of the material things around us. Here also some 
high authorities place our ideas of the beautiful and 
sublime, and of right and wrong. Strictly speaking, 
they are capacities of the mind through which judg¬ 
ment and reason reach such knowledge; all minds 
have by nature, both the ability to hold these ideas, and 
the innate mould which shapes their general form and 
tendency. The growth of the idea of the beautiful 
and sublime, and that of right and wrong will in a 
future chapter receive the attention due them. 

Analysis of the Intuitive Power:— 


Intuitive 

Power. 


r First Truths. < 




Intuitive 
Conceptions. 


r Personal Existence. 

Confidence in our Senses. 
Confidence in our Mental Processes. 
Personal Identity. 

Adequate Causes. 

^ Uniformity of Nature. 

" Space. 

Time. 

Identity. 

Idea of the Beautiful and Sublime. 
Idea of Right and Wrong. 









iRESERTATIVE POWER, OR THE 






THEORIES. 

EARLY all of our knowledge comes to us 
ultimately through the medium of the five 
special senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste 
and smell. All matters pertaining to these 
five senses have been much vexed questions 
from the earliest times to the present. 
Some of the doctrines that have been held 
by eminent philosophers are certainly amus¬ 
ing to persons not familiar with such discus¬ 
sions. For instance, it has been held, and that not 
very long ago, and by no less men than Hume and 
Fichte and Hegel, that there is no reality outside of 
the mind; that I may think I am writing at my desk, 
but that it is a mere appearance, and that in reality 
there is probably no paper, no pencil, no desk. Others, 
again, a more numerous and not less able sect, have 
maintained that while, of course, the mind could not 
take cognizance of matter, yet the matter really existed, 
and a sort of image of it was the thing presented to the 
mind by the different senses. Besides these sects in 
all their various schools, there is another which asserts 

that matter is real and does exist, and that we do 

74 



















THEORIES. 


75 


recognize it with the mind, and that our humble and 
much-abused senses are quite reliable. This seems 
to be the most common-sense view that could possibly 
be taken, and so, without stopping to give lengthy 
reasons, we may enroll ourselves with the Realists, and 
proceed to describe a few of the many very curious 
things which present themselves in connection with 
the five senses. 


NOTABLE FACT. 


A notable fact, this of our having five distinct and 
separate senses, each fitted to perceive certain qualities 
of matter, none infringing upon the offices of the 
others, and yet all capable of so high a degree of 


cultivation that if either of its two principal ones is 


destroyed the others, to a great extent, supply the 
deficiency. 

It seems almost superfluous to dwell upon the 
importance and value of the five senses, and yet it 
may, perhaps, be worth while to try to conceive for 
a few moments what would have been our condition 
had we been less perfectly made in this respect. 



The three senses, touch, taste and smell, minister 
principally to the wants of the body; the other two, 
sight and hearing, are the servants of the highest func¬ 
tions of the mind. Without them, how dreary and 
blank would be our existence! All communication 


76 


THE FIVE SENSES. 


with the world would be cut off. Our social capacities, 
and desires would be but means of the most cruel 
torture. We should all be in the condition of Byron’s 
“ Prisoner of Chillon,” or worse, for we could not even 
take refuge among spiders and mice. Surrounded by 
millions of our fellow-men, we could look none of them 
in the face, exchange a kindly word with none of them. 
Most desolate indeed would be our lot. The most 
glorious scenes of nature would have no meaning for 
us. For us the Alps would have no beauty, the 
mighty rush of Niagara no sublimity. We might stand 
in the midst of the most terrific storm, with no feeling 
of its majesty; the glare of the lightning unseen, the 
crash of the thunder unheard. All the triumphs of 
nature and art in the production of whatever is grand 
or beautiful would be in vain; we could not hear the 
music and the poetry, and we could not see the paint¬ 
ing or sculpture. The particular uses of sight and 

4 

hearing are as various as the occasions of life; they can 
not be enumerated at all. So far as the qualities of 
matter are concerned, sight has for its duty the per¬ 
ception of color, extension, form and distance, while 
hearing takes notice of sound. 



Touch acts as a safeguard to the body in various 
ways. Perhaps it is the sense which tells us of the 
degree of heat and cold and warns us to dress ourselves 
accordingly. It tells us when anything is wrong in our 





TOUCH. 


77 


clothing, and thus prevents radical injury to the body 

from ill-fitting shoes, tight waists, etc. It informs us, 

* 

or helps to inform us, of the hardness, softness, 
shape and dimension of things with which it comes in 
contact. It is eminently a practical sense and does not 
seem to afford us much of what can be called pleasure, 
though to be sure there is a low degree of pleasure in 
touching any soft delicate fabric or structure of any 
kind. 

feTE and Smell. 

Taste and smell were given us principally to aid us 
In the selection of proper food. The beast in the fields 
seldom eats poisonous vegetables, because his keen 
senses tell him of their noxious character. It is so 
with us in a state of nature. Had we not, by constant 
abuse, deadened the activities of these two senses, they 
would never let anything pass down our throats which 
could in any way be injurious to our health. The little 
child likes his bowl of bread and milk, but will not 
touch the highly flavored dishes which we older ones 
relish. An amusing and somewhat humbling request 
of a little three-year-old boy serves a fair example. A 
group of persons, including the child’s parents, were 
eating ice cream. The little fellow was given a taste, 
but did not like it, and presently said, “Warm it, papa; 
it’s too cold.” The child’s taste was pure and uncor¬ 
rupted. Aside from the usefulness of the taste and 
smell in warning us against unhealthy food, they are 


73 


THE FIVE SENSES. 


the source of a great deal of pleasure. The joys of the 
table are no insignificant share of the joys of life — 
with some people they are entirely too large a share. 
The sweet, delicate perfumes of the flowers that strew 
the earth, form a source of the purest pleasure. Who 
that has ever been on a farm in summer time can fail 
to remember the delicious odor of the new-mown hay, 
or that of the breath of cattle as they return in the 
evening from their day’s browsing upon clover fields ? 

These five senses are classed together as making 
up that power of mind which presents to the mind a 
knowledge of the outside world, and is therefore called 
the Present'ative Power, or Presentation. 


Presentative Power. 


Sight. 

Hearing. 

Touch. 

Taste. 

Smell. 


DISTANCE. 







Some of these perceptions are more or less complex, 
being composed of a simple sensation, combined with 
and supplemented by acts of judgment. Thus, I 
have said that distance was determined by the sight. 
The process is something like this : I see a man ; the 
size is known to me; comparing the real size as I 
knew it, with the apparent size as the image of the man 
is presented to my mind, I form a judgment as to the 






DISTANCE. 


79 


probable distance between the man and myself. And 
vice versa , the distance being known, we estimate the 
size by a process quite similar. The operation is gen¬ 
erally performed so quickly that we are scarcely con¬ 
scious of it, but that the mind really does go through 
some such process, is amply proven by such facts as 
these. Travelers in Colorado often start to walk to 
some object seemingly only a short distance from them, 
but which is in reality several miles away. Here is the 
reason : the object, we will suppose it to be a tree, is 
of known size; the air of Colorado being much purer 
and dryer than that of most parts of the world, does 
not intercept the view, and the tree is seen as distinctly 
as it would be elsewhere at a short distance. The trav¬ 
eler judges in accordance with his experience gained 
in other places — hence the deception. On the other 
hand, in damp, foggy weather, objects seen seem to be 
at more than their actual distance from us. Men in the 
street, seem, when looked upon from the top of a very 
high building, like mere boys; sailors, at the top of the 
masts, present the same appearance. Captain Parry, 
the celebrated Arctic explorer, tells this circumstance, 
which illustrates the same principle. Looking over a 
uniform surface of snow, there was nothing with which 
to make comparisons, hence, distance and size of 
objects were unknown, and no reliable judgment could 
be formed. “We had frequent occasions,” says he, “in 
our walks upon the shore, to remark the deception 
which takes place in estimating the distance and mag¬ 
nitude of objects — when viewed over an unvaried sur- 



So 


THE FIVE SENSES. 


face of snow. It was not uncommon for us to direct 
our steps toward what we took to be a large mass of 
stone, at the distance of a half mile from us, but 
which we were able to take up in our hands after one 
minute’s walk. This was more particularly the case 
when ascending the brow of a hill.” 

SIZE. 

4 

“ In our judgment of vision by the magnitude of 
objects, again,” says Dr. Abercrombie, “we are much 
influenced by comparison with other objects, the mag¬ 
nitude of which is supposed to be known. I remember 
once having occasion to pass along Ludgate Hill, when 
the great door of St. Pauls’ was open, and several 
persons were standing in it. They appeared to be very 
little children; but, on coming up to them, were found 
to be full-grown persons. In the mental process which 
here took place, the door had been assumed as of 
ordinary size, and the other objects judged by it. 
Had I attended to the door being much larger than 
any door that one is in the habit of seeing, the mind 
would have made allowance for the apparent size of the 
persons; and, on the other hand, had these been known 
to be full-grown persons, a judgment would have been 
formed of the size of the door. On the same principle, 
travelers visiting the pyramids of Egypt have repeat¬ 
edly remarked how greatly the notion of their magni¬ 
tude is increased by a number of large animals, as 
camels, being assembled at their base.” 



CULTIVATION OF THE SENSES. 


81 


Cultivation of the Senses. 

Whether it is the sense itself which is improved, or 
whether it is only the power of attention to the impres¬ 
sion made upon the sense, it is difficult to say. Quite 
likely it may be a combination of the two. But, be 
that as it may, it is certain that in their practical mani¬ 
festations all of our senses are capable of being wonder¬ 
fully cultivated. The most remarkable examples of a 
high degree of cultivation in the various senses, are in 
the cases of persons who have been compelled by a 
lack of some one sense to make up the deficiency by an 
increased power in the others. I have heard a blind 
man play upon the piano, playing two tunes at the 
same time, or even playing one tune upon the piano 
and another upon the organ, both at the same time. 
H is playing of one piece at a time upon the piano, was, 
so far as I could judge, perfectly accurate; but there 
was no soul or expression, his whole attention, appar¬ 
ently, being absorbed in the problem of striking the 
proper notes, without being able to see the key-board. 
In this and all similar cases (they are not rare), the 
performer seems to have acquired a remarkable ability 
to tell by the combined action of hearing, touch, and an 
unnamed muscular sense, the location of his fingers. 
Dr. Moyse, blind, could tell black cloth by the smell of 
it. Others have been able to distinguish colors by the 
touch ; black, as one individual said, having the greatest 

degree of harshness, and blue the least. Dr. Aber- 
6 




82 THE FIVE SENSES. 

crombie tells of two blind men who were much 
esteemed as judges of horses. One of these, in giving 
his opinion of a horse, declared him to be blind, though 
this had escaped the observation of several persons who 
had the use of their eyes, and who were with some 
difficulty convinced of it. Being asked to give an 
account of the principle on which he had decided, he 
said that it was by the sound of the horse’s step in 
walking, which implied a peculiar and unusual caution 
in his manner of putting down his feet. The other 
individual, in similar circumstances, pronounced a 
horse to be blind of one eye, though this had also 
escaped the observation of those concerned. When he 
was asked to explain the facts on which he founded his 
judgment, he said he felt the one eye to be colder than 
the other. Dr. Rush tells of two blind young men, 
brothers, of the city of Philadelphia, who knew when 
they approached a post in walking across a street, by 
a peculiar sound which the ground under their feet 
emitted in the neighborhood of the post; and they 
could tell the names of a number of tame pigeons, with 
which they amused themselves in a little garden, by 
only hearing them fly over their heads. I have heard 
of blind men who could form a pretty good estimate of 
the height of a building, by sound. Mr. Saunderson, 
a blind man, could distinguish by the sense of touch 
the genuine from the spurious in a series of Roman 
medals. In our asylums for the blind, the unfortunates 
are taught to read, and that quite rapidly, from books 


CULTIVATION OF**THE SENSES. 83 

in which the letters are raised in the paper so as to 
be felt by the fingers. 

THE DEAF. 

The deaf and dumb learn to talk quite readily by 
means of signs made on the fingers, and denoting the 
various letters of the alphabet. Deaf people frequently 
acquire the ability to understand persons who are talk¬ 
ing by watching the motions of their lips. A most 
wonderful and curious case of that kind was related 
by Prof. Cohn, of the Chicago School of Languages. 
He says that a deaf lady who was entirely ignorant 
of German became his pupil. She could speak her 
native language — English — and could understand it 
by watching the lips of the speaker, but she had little 
idea of beinor able to learn a foreign tongue in that 
way; still she tried it and succeeded perfectly, being 
able in due season to understand, and, if I remember 
the Professor correctly, to speak the German language 
without ever having heard a word of it. Several 
instances have been known of persons affected with 
that extreme degree of deafness which occurs in the 
deaf and dumb, who had a peculiar susceptibility to 
particular kinds of sounds, depending apparently upon 
an impression communicated to their organs of touch 
or simple sensation. They could tell, for instance, the 
approach of a carriage in the street, without seeing it, 
before it was taken notice of by persons who had the 
use of all their senses. Persons whose business it is to 
test wine or tea can distinguish by the taste between all 




8 4 


THE FIVE SENSES. 


the different varieties and qualities of those drinks. It 
is said that a gentleman in France lost all his senses 
except that of touch in one side of his face, and that 
his friends were able to communicate with him by 
tracing characters upon that portion which still retained 
the power of feeling. The wonderful extent to which 
the North American Indians have carried the education 
of their senses is familiar to all. Sounds and sights 
which would altogether escape the ears and eyes of 
the ordinary white man are full of significance to the 
Indian. He can pick his way through the pathless 
woods or over the boundless prairies by certain indica¬ 
tions in the trees and plants, which tell him the points 
of the compass. The slightest crackling of a twig or 
rustling in the grass is sufficient to put him on his 
guard. He can put his ear to the ground and hear 
the tramp of the horses of a hostile force long before 
they come into sight, and hear it plainly enough to 
distinguish it from that of a herd of buffalo. 


FALSE PERCEPTION. 

It often happens in diseased conditions of the 
organs of sense, and sometimes when they are healthy, 
that false perception occurs. Things seem to be larger 
or smaller than they are, or of different color, or things 
appear to be where they are not, or there is a sensation 
of sound when really no sound exists at the time. 
There are a hundred different phases which these illu¬ 
sions may take. Only a few examples will be given. 
The following is from Dr. Darwin : “ I covered a paper 



FALSE PERCEPTION. 


35 


about four inches square with yellow, and with a pen 
filled with a blue color, wrote upon the middle of it 
the word banks in capitals ; and sitting with my back 
to the sun, fixed my eyes for a minute exactly on the 

center of the letter n in the word. After shutting my 

% 

eyes, and shading them somewhat with my hand, the 
word was distinctly seen in the spectrum, in yellow 
colors on a blue ground; and then on opening my eyes 
on a yellowish wall at twenty feet distant, the magni¬ 
fied name banks appeared on the wall written in golden 
characters.” A gentleman who had been looking 
intently at a print of the virgin and child, was surprised 
to see, on looking up, at the other end of the room, a 
female figue, life size, holding a child. The figure was 
the exact counterpart of the print at which he had been 
looking. Another gentleman seemed to see a woman 
approaching him. He knew at the time that the figure 
was an illusion, as he could see objects directly behind 
her. Finally, upon his moving his body forward 
slightly, the figure disappeared. A gentleman recover¬ 
ing from sickness heard one evening a particular strain 
from a bugle. For about nine months this sound was 
never out of his ears, during all of which time he was 
in a very precarious state of health, and it was only 
with the re-establishment of his strength that the 
sensation left him. 


OBSERVATIONS. 

The five senses, all working in healthful unison, 
enable the mind to correct the impressions of one 


86 


THE FIVE SENSES. 


sense by those of the others in such a manner as by 
their united operation to obtain full and accurate 
intelligence concerning the surrounding world. The 
well known case which the philosophic Cheselden has 
related affords a decisive experiment, agreeing, as it 
does, with many others, in proof that the information 
derived from the sense of sight requires to be corrected 
by information from different sources, but that when 
the habit of seeing is established under this correction, 
vision continues to suggest the true relation of objects 
to each other. 

A young man who had no remembrance of ever 
having seen was treated by a surgeon and received 
his sight, but when he first saw he could not judge 
of distances, but thought all visible objects touched his 
eye, as what he felt touched the skin. He expected 
that pictures would feel like what they represented, and 
was amazed when he found those parts which by light 
and shadow appeared round and uneven, felt flat like 
the rest, and asked which was the lying sense, feeling 
or sight. When shown a miniature of his father, he 
acknowledged the likeness, but desired to know how 
so large a face could be expressed in so small a com¬ 
pass, saying it seemed as impossible to him as to put 
a bushel into a pint. The things he first saw he 
thought extremely large, and upon seeing larger 
things, those first seen he conceived less, not being 
able to imagine any lines beyond the bounds he 
beheld. He could not conceive that the house could 
look larger than the room he was in. He said every 


OBSERVATIONS. 


87 


new object was a new delight. On first beholding a 
large prospect his pleasure was beyond expression, and 
he called it a new kind of seeing. These details prove 
that sight does not originally inform us respecting the 
real distance or magnitude of objects, but that we learn 
these things from the experience and help of our other 
senses ; therefore the mind. exercises an independent 
judgment in comparing their impressions, a power 
which the senses themselves could never have con¬ 
ferred. The basis of this independent judgment by 
the mind is Intuition, and in the reasoning faculties, 
which will be explained in their proper place. 

The practical lesson from facts concerning the use 
of our senses is simply the propriety of taking care 
to employ them suitably, to preserve and improve 
them, since our social comfort and influence, as well 
as our intellectual advancement, depend in this world 
on their integrity. Their destruction is the exclusion 
of knowledge and wisdom at their chief entrances. 
Delicacy of perception is essential to acuteness of 
intellect; but perception is perfected rather by the 
will-power in the habit of attention while using the 
senses than by keenness of sensation. 




lEPRESENT/mOJi 


HE mind has the power of calling up past 
thoughts, feelings, events, and images of 
things once seen. This power is, in a 
general way, called memory, but it is more 
than memory, for not only are things once 
seen, afterward called up again, but we can 
change the arrangement of these images in 
our own minds. Remembering how a horse 
looks and the appearance of a cow, we can 
imagine how a creature would look having 
a cow’s head on a horse’s body, thus using 
the images of real things to create in the 
mind an image of a thing that never was. 
This faculty, generally engaged in calling up 
pictures in the mind of real things once seen, is imagi¬ 
nation. A powerful imagination is the gift of the poet 
who combines ideas in new and beautiful forms, and 
holds in his mind the scenes of earth in pictures so vivid 
and so striking that his descriptions of them thrill us; 
and the most ordinary mechanic who builds upon a 
new plan must see in his mind the image of the frame 
of his building, and a picture of the structure very 
nearly as it will look when completed. 

So, memory and imagination work together, con- 

88 


































MEMORY. 


s 9 


tinually representing to the mind whatever it has once 
learned through Intuition, and the five senses, or Pre- 
sentative power. Memory and imagination, then, form 
what we may call Representation, or the Representa¬ 
tive Power of the mind. 



Memory is a complex, not a simple faculty. I hear a 
story told, and my mind retains it; that is Memory, 
properly speaking. Afterward I recall the story, think 
it over again in detail, recalling each particular; that is 
Recollection. 

DURATION OF MEMORY. 

What is the nature of Memory? How long does it 
last? Is it perpetual, or only temporal? These are 
questions to which the philosophers have given quite 
different answers. As to its nature, the best idea is 
conveyed in the definition given above. Memory is sim¬ 
ply the power that the mind has of retaining the impres¬ 
sions made upon it. But how long does it retain them ? 
While life lasts. In some way, no one knows how, 
every thought, sight, sound, feeling, action, leaves its 
impress upon the mind. The presumption is that the 
impress stays there. It would require positive proof to 
show that it is effaced. Such proof does not exist; on 
the other hand, many circumstances have been observed 
which confirm the opposite doctrine. 

It is well known that many persons who have been 
rescued when at the point of drowning, report that 


90 


REPRESENTATION. 


within a very short space of time their whole lives 
seemed to rise up before them; and that all their 
actions, good and bad, came thronging about them. 
Day records the following as having been related to 
him by the subject of the narrative: “ He had been 

entrusted with the safe-keeping of a package of valua¬ 
ble papers by a relative when about taking a long 
journey. On the return of his friend he was utterly 
unable to recall where he had placed the package. The 
most diligent and careful search as well as every effort 
of recollection failed to discover the desired package. 
Years after, when bathing, he was seized with cramp 
and sank. He rose and sank again ; and, as he was. 
just sinking the third time, a companion succeeded 
in reaching and rescuing him. During the momentary 
interval between his disappearing the third time and his 
being seized by his companion, his whole life in its 
minute incidents passed in review before his mind; and 
among them the fact of his secreting the package and 
the place where he had concealed it. He proceeded 
immediately to the spot, where he found, just as he had 
placed it, what he had so long sought in vain.” 

Coleridge’s story. 

Coleridge tells the following anecdote in his Bio- 
graphia Literaria . The occurrence took place in a 
Roman Catholic town in Germany about 1797. “A 
young woman of four or five and twenty, who could 
neither read nor write, was seized with a nervous fever, 

f . \*^ r I 

during which, according to the testimony of all the 




Coleridge’s story. 91 

priests and monks of the neighborhood, she became 
possessed of an evil spirit. She continued incessantly 
talking Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in very pompous 
tones and with most distinct enunciation. The case 
had attracted the particular attention of a young physi¬ 
cian, and by his statement many eminent physiologists 
and psychologists visited the town and cross-examined 
the case on the spot. Sheets full of her ravings were 
taken down from her own mouth, and were found to 
consist of sentences, coherent and intelligible, each for 
itself, but with little or no connection with each other. 
Of the Hebrew, a small portion only could be traced 
to the Bible; the remainder seemed to be in the Rab¬ 
binical dialect. All trick or conspiracy was out of the 
question. Not only had the young woman ever been 
a harmless, simple creature, but she was evidently 
laboring under a nervous fever. In the town in which 
she had been resident for many years as a servant in 
different families, no solution presented itself. The 
young physician, however, determined to trace her past 
life step by step; for the patient herself was incapable 
of returning a rational answer. He at length succeeded 
in discovering the place where her parents had lived; 
traveled thither, found them dead, but an uncle surviv¬ 
ing, and from him learned that the patient had been 
charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor at nine 
years old, and had remained with him some years, even 
till the old man’s death. Of this pastor the uncle 
knew nothing, but that he was a very good man. With 
great difficulty, and after much search, our young med- 


9 2 


REPRESENTATION. 


ical philosopher discovered a niece of the pastor’s, who 
had lived with him as his housekeeper, and had inher¬ 
ited his effects. She remembered the girl; related that 
her venerable uncle had been too indulgent, and could 
not bear to hear the girl scolded; that she was willing 
to have kept her, but that, after her patron’s death, 
the girl herself refused to stay. Anxious inquiries 
were then, of course, made concerning the pastor’s 
habits, and the solution of the phenomenon was soon 
obtained. For it appeared that it had been the old 
man’s custom, for years, to walk up and down a passage 
of his house into which the kitchen door opened, and 
to read to himself in a loud voice, out of his favorite 
books. A considerable number of these were still in 
the niece’s possession. She added that he was a very 
learned man and a great Hebraist. Among the books 
were found a collection of Rabbinical writings, together 
with several of the Greek and Latin fathers; and the 
physician succeeded in identifying so many passages 
with those taken down at the young woman’s bedside, 
that no doubt could remain in any rational mind con¬ 
cerning the true origin of the impressions made on her 
nervous system.” The girl had heard him from the 
kitchen years before, and now in her excited mental 
condition she repeated things she never understood, 
and in quite regular order. A very similar instance is 
that of the Countess of Laval, who, when sick, fre¬ 
quently spoke in a language that her servants were 
unable to understand. A nurse from her native prov¬ 
ince, Brittany, was engaged, and recognized the strange 


Coleridge’s story. 


93 


idiom as her native tongue. Yet when well and awake, 
the Countess did not understand a word of that speech, 
so completely had she, to all appearances, forgotten it. 


OUR OWN EXPERIENCE. 

Cases like these might be given in great number. 
But they do not form the only support for this view of 
memory. Every one has observed the same thing in 
himself in a less degree. Scarcely a day passes, but 
that some incident of which we have not thought for 
years comes up to our minds. Memory has taken the 
passing moment, fixed it upon the canvas, and hung 
the picture on the soul’s inner chamber, for her to look 
upon when she will. You see in a newspaper the name 
of some old acquaintance, and what a flood of thoughts 
comes over you. Thousands of dead hopes and disap¬ 
pointments, joys and sorrows, are revived and live 
again. You pass through a town which you visited 
years ago, and your whole life in the place is exhibited 
in panorama before you. You sit dreaming dreams 
before the fire, and your boyhood home appears — all 
the woods and streams, the meadows and hills, every 
nook and cranny in the old house and barn, the place 
where you stubbed your toe and fell one Sunday morn¬ 
ing, the naughty things you did and the whippings you 
got for them, the prizes you won at school, the kisses 
you used to throw at the freckle-faced girl at your left 
when the teacher wasn’t looking, the notes you wrote 
when you got a little older — also when the teacher 
wasn’t looking—the proud aspirations of your early 




94 


/ 


REPRESENTATION. 


manhood, how you were going to spurn difficulties 
from your pathway and carve out an immortal name 
for yourself, how one by one these aspirations and 
longings were laid aside, and you became the sober¬ 
sided dray-horse of a man you now are. All these 
things show themselves, do they not? And when the 
dream that began so gayly ends, it finds your eyes dim 
and your cheeks wet. 


COMPARISONS. 

Writers have found many material things to which 
they have compared the mind. It has often been 
likened to a wax tablet whereon things were written. 
It has been said to be a clean, white piece of paper 
in infancy, on which all events and thoughts were 
recorded and blots were made, until death. Plato 
compares it to a pigeon house where one keeps the 
birds he has caught until he needs them. So, he 
thinks, we put away the ideas we acquire, and when 
we want them we go to our pigeon house and take 
whatever we are in need of. Here is another simile. 
The mind seems to me like a piece of paper whereon 
are written in invisible ink every thought, every action, 
every desire, every passion or emotion, every mental 
experience of what kind soever, to stay as long as life 
shall last. We may not see it, may not suspect its 
presence, but just as a little heat applied to the paper 
will bring into view the words written in invisible ink, 
so the right kind of stimulus will invariably produce 
the record of our past lives. We never forget. How 





COMPARISONS. 


95 


careful we ought to be that these things which must 
be remembered, may be worthy of memory! Cole¬ 
ridge even suggests that the judgment-book of Script¬ 
ure may be no other than the replacing of our earthly 
body by a celestial one, by means of which this invis¬ 
ible ink may be brought out, and all our deeds and 
thoughts, good and bad, stand plainly recorded in 
our own memories. 


Recollection.-Haws of Association. 

Recollection, as we saw above, is the recalling to 
mind, either voluntarily or involuntarily, of something 
in the past which has been remembered. We cannot 
directly call up before our minds anything from 
memory. The process adopted by the Will here is 
always an indirect one. I think of one thing, and that 
leads me to think of another, and that of another, and 
so on indefinitely. Our whole thought is a series of 
chains of less or greater length, each having for its first 
link some perception which has changed the course 
of our ideas. 

The different ways in which things that naturally 
suggest each other are related, have been called the 
Laws of Association. There are several classifications 
of these laws, but the following includes the more 
important ones, and will fill our purpose. Resem¬ 
blance, contrast, contiguity, or nearness in time or 
place, cause and effect,— these four are called the 
primary laws of association. 



9 6 


REPRESENTATION. 


There are in addition several secondary laws which 
in various ways modify the operations of these. The 
principal secondary laws are attention, lapse of time, 
constitutional differences, professional differences, and 
repetition. 

We may now present a complete analysis of memory 
by diagram. As Imagination is the only branch needed 
to complete the Representative Power, it will occupy 
its proper place in a complete diagram and be treated 
next after the completion of memory. 


'Memory 

Proper. 


' Resemblance. 


'Memory. - 


' Primary. 


Contrast (Difference). 
Nearness of time or place. 


Represen¬ 
tation, or 
Represen--< 
tative 
Power. 


Recollection, 
or Laws of - 
k Association. 


Cause and effect. 
Attention. 

Lapse of time. 


_ Secondary. 


Constitutional Differences. 


Professional Differences. 
„ Repetition. 


k Imagination. 


Irimary Haws of Association. 

RESEMBLANCE. 

One of two things that are alike is almost sure to 
suggest the other in our minds. If I should see a 
house to-day like one I lived in several years ago, I 
should certainly think of my former home. The sight 
of a person having some peculiarity which an acquaint- 









PRIMARY LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 97 

ance also has, will recall the acquaintance. Hobbes 
relates that he was in a company where the conversa¬ 
tion was upon the Civil War in England, when sud¬ 
denly some one asked the value of a Roman denarius. 
No question, seemingly, could be less pertinent to the 
subject of conversation. But Hobbes says that after a 
little thought he was able to retrace the steps which 
the questioners mind had taken. The chain was some¬ 
thing like this : The civil war suggested the personal 
history of King Charles; that led to the traitorous 
conduct of those who delivered him to his enemies; 
that to the treason of Judas Iscariot, who received 
thirty pieces of silver for betraying the Lord. The 
Romans were in possession of Jerusalem at the time, 
and hence the connection between the thirty pieces 
of silver and the Roman coin called the denarius. I 
have somewhere read that Longfellow used to remem¬ 
ber the street number—No. 39 — of the house in 
Boston in which Miss Appleton, afterward his wife, 
lived, by associating it with the thirty-nine articles 
of the Church of England. 

“ Resemblance operates,” says Upham, “as an asso¬ 
ciating principle, not only when there is a likeness 
or similarity in the things themselves, but also when 
there is a resemblance in the effects which are pro¬ 
duced upon the mind. The ocean, for instance, when 
greatly agitated by the winds, and threatening every 
moment to overwhelm us, produces in the mind an 
emotion similar to that which is caused by the presence 
of an angry man who is able to do us harm. And in 
7 




9 8 


REPRESENTATION. 


consequence of this similarity in the effects produced, 
it is sometimes the case that they reciprocally bring 
each other to our recollection. Dark woods, hanging 
over the brow of a mountain, cause in us a feeling of 
awe and wonder, like that which we feel when we 
behold approaching us some aged person whose form 
is venerable for his years, and whose name is renowned 
for wisdom and justice. As we are so constituted that 
all nature produces in us certain effects, causes certain 
emotions similar to those which are caused in our 
intercourse with our fellow beings, it so happens that, 
in virtue of this fact, the natural world becomes living, 
animated. The 6cean is said to be in anger, the sky 
smiles, the cliff frowns, the aged woods are venerable, 
the earth and its productions are no longer a dead 
mass, but have an existence, a soul, an agency. We 
see here, in part, the foundation of metaphorical lan¬ 
guage, and it is here that we are to look for the 
principles by which we are to determine the propriety 
or impropriety of its use.” 

CONTRAST. 

The power of contrast in suggestion is scarcely less 
potent than that of resemblance. The palace suggests 
the hovel; the wealth of the Vanderbilts and Roths¬ 
childs comes to our minds together with the poverty 
of so many we see around us daily; the valley recalls 
the mountain; the desert, the fertile plain; a flood 
reminds us of a drouth. In reading, we constantly find 
joined such ideas as these: joy and sorrow, pleasure 


CONTRAST. 


99 


and pain, day and night, sickness and health, the cradle 
and the grave, life and death, famine and plenty, liberty 
and slavery, luxury and want. All this shows the 
natural tendency of the mind to contrast dissimilar 
things. 

CONTIGUITY, OR NEARNESS OF TIME AND PLACE. 

This is, of the four, perhaps the most widely 
influential cause of recollection. If the civil war of 
America is mentioned, your mind instantly travels 
backward, and you think over those stirring times. 
The names and deeds of Grant, Lee, Sherman, Jack- 
son, Johnston, McClellan, Farragut, Lincoln, Davis, 
and dozens of others, come thronging up before you. 
You receive again the tidings of the terrible slaughter 
at Bull Run, Vicksburg, Shiloh and Gettysburg. In 
short, you live it all over again in memory. The singu¬ 
lar power which local association often possesses is 
well illustrated by the following anecdote, which a 
physician tells of himself: “ Walking in the street 
lately I met a lady whose face was familiar to me, but 
whom I could not name. I had at the same time an 
impression that I ought to have spoken to her, and to 
have inquired for some relative who had been my 
patient; but, notwithstanding repeated efforts, I could 
not recognize her, and passed on. Some time after, 
in passing along the road a few miles from town, my 
eye caught a cottage to which I had been taken about 
six months before to see a gentleman who had been 
carried into it in a state of insensibility, in consequence 


IOO 


REPRESENTATION. 


of being thrown from a gig. The sight of the cottage 
instantly recalled the accident and the gentleman who 
was the subject of it, and at the same instant the 
impression that the lady whom I had passed in the 
manner above mentioned was his wife. In this case 
no recollection was excited by the sight of the lady, 
even after repeated and anxious attempts; and I 
believe I should not have recognized the patient 
himself had he been along with her; whereas the 
whole was recalled in an instant by the sight of the 
cottage.” Here is another story, believed to be 
authentic. It illustrates not only the force of local 
memory, but also the duration of memory as discussed 
above: A lady, in the last stage of a chronic disease, 
was carried from London to a lodging in the country. 
There her infant daughter was taken to visit her, 
and, after a short interview, carried back to town. 
The lady died a few days after, and the daughter 
grew up without any recollection of her mother till 
she was of mature age. At this time she happened 
to be taken into the room in which her mother died 
without knowing it to have been so. She started on 
entering it, and when a friend who was along with her 
asked the cause of her agitation, replied: “I have a 
distinct impression of having been in this room before, 
and that a lady who lay in that corner and seemed very 
ill leaned over me and wept.” The following is to the 
same effect. It is taken from Ribot’s book on the dis¬ 
eases of memory: “A clergyman, endowed with a decid¬ 
edly artistic temperament (a fact worth noting), went 


CONTIGUITY. 


IOI 


with a party of friends to a castle in Sussex, which he 
did not remember ever to have previously visited. 
As he approached the gateway he became conscious 
of a very vivid impression of having seen it before, 
and he seemed to himself to see not only the gateway 
itself, but donkeys beneath the arch and people on 
top of it. His conviction that he must have visited 
the castle on some former occasion made him inquire 
of his mother if she could throw any light on the 
matter. She at once informed him that, being in 
that part of the country when he was about eighteen 
months old, she had gone over with a large party and 
taken him in the panier of a donkey; that the elders 
of the party having brought lunch with them had eaten 
it on the roof of the gateway, where they would have 
been seen from below, while he had been left on the 
ground with the attendants and donkeys.” This is the 
branch of memory which should receive most careful 
attention by those who desire to cultivate this faculty. 
The study of any subject to be remembered should be 
continued by the student until he sees it distinctly in 
parts, the relative importance of these parts, and the 
order in which they come; that is, which stands first 
and which comes last in making up the whole. 

It is this association of place and time that makes us 
desire to visit the spots hallowed by great deeds or the 
presence of mighty men. It is what gives Rome so 
much magnetism to draw the educated people of the 
whole world. One feels a strong emotion of delightful 
awe when standing in the Roman Forum, where 


102 


REPRESENTATION. 


Cicero, Caesar, Cato, and all the other wondrous Latin 
orators and statesmen spoke and worked. It is no 
common feeling one would have in treading the very 
stones Virgil and Horace have trod. That is also what 
makes Westminster Abbey, to all lovers of English 
literature and history, the most interesting spot on the 
globe. It is what draws travelers in Germany to the 
little town of Weimar, where lived the poets Goethe, 
Schiller, Herder and Wieland, and where preached the 
great reformer Luther. 

It is also what causes the peculiar pleasure attend¬ 
ing any reference to our younger days. Dr. Rush tells 
the following pleasant story: “ During the time I 

passed at a country school in Cecil County, in Mary¬ 
land, I often went on a holiday, with my schoolmates, 
to see an eagle’s nest upon the summit of a dead tree, 
in the neighborhood of the school, during the time 
of the incubation of the bird. The daughter of the 
farmer in whose field the tree stood, and with whom I 
became acquainted, married and settled in this city 
about forty years ago. In our occasional interviews, 
we now and then spoke of the innocent haunts and 
rural pleasures of our youth, and among others, of the 
eagle’s nest in her father’s field. A few years ago, 
I was called to visit this woman when she- was in 
the lowest stage of typhus fever. Upon entering the 
room, I caught her eye, and with a cheerful tone of 
voice said only, ‘The eagle’s nest.’ She seized my 
hand, without being able to speak, and discovered 
strong emotions of pleasure in her countenance, proba- 






CONTIGUITY. 


103 


bly from a sudden association of all her early domestic 
connections and enjoyments with the words which I 
uttered. From that time she began to recover. She is 
now living, and seldom fails when we meet, to salute 
me with the echo of—‘The eagle’s nest.’” 

The herdsmen in the Swiss Alps have a number of 
simple tunes called Rcinz des Vackes , which they sing or 
play on the alp-horn. The effect of hearing any of 
these tunes in foreign lands is to produce so great 
a degree of home-sickness that the bands of Swiss 
regiments in foreign service have to be forbidden to 
play them, in order that the soldiers may not in that 

way be rendered unfit for the performance of their 

• 

duties 

CAUSE AND EFFECT. 

The cause suggests the effect, and, on the contrary, 
the effect suggests the cause. The sight of a knife 
with which we have been hurt, reminds us of the 
wound. The mere name of an article of food which 
has at some time made us sick, will produce a qualm at 
the stomach. A torn garment makes us think of a nail 
on which it was probably torn. John Locke relates 
the following in his “ Essay on the Human Understand¬ 
ing.” “A friend of mine knew one perfectly cured 
of madness by a very harsh and offensive operation. 
The gentleman who was thus recovered, with great 
sense of gratitude and acknowledgement, owned the 
cure all his life after as the greatest obligation he 
could have received; but whatever gratitude and 



104 


REPRESENTATION. 


reason suggested to him, he could never bear the sight 
of the operator; that image brought back with it the 
idea of that agony which he suffered from his hands, 
which was too mighty and intolerable for him to 
endure.” The following is of a somewhat pleasanter 
nature, found in the same essay: “It is of a young 
gentleman, who, having learned to dance, and that to 
great perfection, happened to have an old trunk stand¬ 
ing in the room where he learned. The idea of this 
remarkable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself 
with the turns and steps of all his dances, that though 
in that chamber he could dance excellently well, yet it 
was only whilst that trunk was there; nor could he 
perform well in any other place, unless that or some 
such other trunk had its due position in the room. If 
this story shall be suspected of being dressed up with 
some comical circumstances, a little beyond precise 
nature, I answer for myself, that I had it some years 
since from a very sober and worthy man, upon his own 
knowledge, as I report it: and I dare say, there are 
very few inquisitive persons, who read this, who have 
not met with accounts, if not examples, of this nature, 
that may parallel, or at least justify this.” 

Secondary Haws of Association. 


ATTENTION. 

It is a fact well known to every one, that the degree 
of attention which we pay to a thing at the time it 
occurs, very much affects the probability of our recol- 


SECONDARY LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 105 

lecting it. Two persons attend the same lecture — one 
listens attentively, and after the lecture is over, can 
follow the course of thought from beginning to end ; 
the other allows his mind to wander hither and 
thither, and he is able to recollect only an occasional 
idea. 

LAPSE OF TIME. 

The longer the time that has elapsed since any 
occurrence, the fainter the remembrance of it will be. 
There is an apparent exception to this rule in the case 
of the old person who remembers the things that hap¬ 
pened in his boyhood, and forgets those of his middle 
and old age. But it is really no exception. The fact 
is simply that the first and last laws combined is 
stronger than the second alone. (See analysis, page 
96.) .Children are more strongly influenced by the 
things that meet their senses than older people who 
have learned, either voluntarily or otherwise, to prac¬ 
tice the Horatian maxim of nil admirari (to wonder 
at nothing). Besides, all through their lives they have 
been fondly thinking about those early days, and 
talking about them, and thus by habit have made 
the recollection of them an essential part of their 
existence. A beautiful example occurs in the life of 
Niebuhr, the celebrated Danish traveler. When old, 
blind, and so infirm that he was able only to be car¬ 
ried from his bed to his chair, he used to describe 
to his friends the scenes which he had visited in his 
early days with wonderful minuteness and vivacity. 



106 REPRESENTATION. 

When they expressed their astonishment, he told 
them that as he lay in bed, all visible objects being 
shut out, the pictures of what he had seen in his 
travels continually floated before his mind’s eye, so 
that it was no wonder he could speak of them as if 
he had seen them yesterday. With like vividness 
the deep intense sky of Asia, with its brilliant and 
twinkling host of stars, which he had so often gazed 
at by night, or its lofty vault of blue by day, was 
reflected in the hours of stillness and darkness on 
his inmost soul. 

CONSTITUTIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DIFFERENCES. 

Constitutional differences and professional differ¬ 
ences act in precisely the same manner. Several 
men look at the same large tree. One tries to find 
out what kind of a tree it is, and what are its habits 
of growth; another wants to know how much fire¬ 
wood or lumber it will make; another, whether it 
will receive polish and make handsome furniture, and 
still another is content to admire its towering height, 
broadr-reaching limbs and beautiful foliage, without 
seeking to know anything else about it. Men are 
apt to recollect whatever appertains to their own 
calling in life. The lawyer remembers the legal 
decision; the doctor remembers the account of a 
remarkable disease; the farmer remembers whatever 
relates to grain and stock; the engineer, anything 
relating to the strength and use of materials. 




REPETITION. 


107 


REPETITION. 

The only one of the five laws mentioned which 
remains to be considered is repetition. Of this per¬ 
haps the most familiar illustration is the process of 
committing to memory. The lines finally get so that 
they seem to run off our tongues without effort on our 
part. Especially is it a very common experience that 
when we get started on a stanza, we can complete 
it without difficulty, but a break occurs at the end of 
the stanza or paragraph. The reason is that we com¬ 
monly commit stanza by stanza, and do not practice so 
much upon joining one to another. A distinguished 
theatrical performer, in consequence of the sudden ill¬ 
ness of another actor, had occasion to prepare himself, 
on very short notice, for a part which was entirely new 
to him; and the part was long and rather difficult. 
He acquired it in a very short time, and went through 
it with perfect accuracy, but immediately forgot every 
word of it. Characters which he had acquired in a 
more deliberate manner he never forgets, but can per¬ 
form them at any time without a moment’s preparation, 
but in regard to the character now mentioned there 
-was the further and very singular fact, that though he 
has repeatedly performed it since that time, he has 
been obliged each time to prepare it anew, and has 
never acquired in regard to it that facility which is 
familiar to him in other instances. When questioned 
respecting the mental process which he employed the 
first time he performed this part, he says that he lost 


io8 


REPRESENTATION. 


sight entirely of the audience, and seemed to have 
nothing before him but the pages of the book from 
which he had learned it, and that if anything had 
occurred to interrupt this illusion, he should have 
stopped instantly. 

IMPORTANCE OF MEMORY. 

We can scarcely conceive what the condition of man 
would be had he no memory. The past would be more 
completely beyond our reach than the future is now. 
The most exquisite delights would perish as we enjoyed 
them. We should be robbed of all the bright hours 
which friendship, love and family affection can give 
us. Our own fathers and mothers would be strangers 
to us, and we to them, when we met. We could not 
even know ourselves, for the body is constantly chang¬ 
ing, and the only way I know I am the same being 
that I was fifteen years ago is by my internal con¬ 
sciousness of the fact; that is, by memory. We could 
not converse, because the instant a thing was said it 
would be forgotten; nay, more than that, there could 
be no such thing as a language to serve as the medium 
of conversation, for no one could remember the word 
which stood for a particular idea. Indeed, what idea 
would be possible ? My idea of a horse is of an 
animal that I have observed to have four feet, a 
mane, a long neck, to be strong, capable of bearing 
burdens, etc., etc. But without memory I should only 
see a peculiar object which I had never before, to my 
knowledge, seen, and about which I knew absolutely 


IMPORTANCE OF MEMORY IO9 

nothing and could learn nothing. Such, then, is only 
a faint image of what man would be without memory. 
He could better afford to spare almost any other 
faculty which he possesses. As it is, how great is 
the happiness we derive from it! Have we at any 
time seen a beautiful picture, a majestic building, a 
fine landscape, a lovely human face, a glorious sun¬ 
set— it abides with us forever. The soncrs that we 
have heard on other days go sounding through our 
souls again, and are the solace of many a weary hour. 
The golden hours of youth, which all poets so fondly 
sing, are ever present with us in memory. Those who 
are old and feeble, or sick, or blind, find their chief 
pleasure in living over again the days of their strength 
and activity. We con the books of all ages, and 
gather from them grand thoughts of sages and mar¬ 
tyrs, which cheer and encourage us on our way. 
The deeds of heroes who have gone before give us 
inspiration to more strenuous exertions and nobler 
aims. 

Hail, memory, hail! in thy exhaustless mine, 

From age to age unnumber’d treasures shine! 

Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, 

And place and time are subject to thy sway! 

— Rogers . 

RELATION TO GENERAL MENTAL POWER. 

It is a very common impression that an unusually 
good memory is incompatible with great intellectual 
strength. I believe, however, that there is very little, 


I IO 


REPRESENTATION. 


if any, ground for this prevalent opinion. It is often 
the case that extraordinary endowment in one thing 
is found connected with some degree of weakness 
in other things. Thus, Blind d om, the celebrated 
Negro musical prodigy, is said to be almost an idiot 
in every thing outside of music. Probably a great 
memory is no more apt to be united with a mind 
generally weak, than is a great talent for music, or 
mathematics, or rhetoric, or any other particular thing. 
A man certainly could not be very highly endowed who 
had an unusually weak memory, for it lies at the very 
basis of all mental processes. So many cases are on 
record, however, of powerful memories joined to weak 
general faculties, that a gift in that way can not be 
considered a reliable criterion of mental ability. The 
following examples will illustrate and enforce what has 
been said on this subject. 

On one occasion an Englishman called upon Frederic 
the Great, of Prussia, in order to exhibit to him his 
remarkable memory. As a test, Frederic summoned 
Voltaire, who read aloud to the King a poem of consid¬ 
erable length, which he had just completed. Meanwhile 
the Englishman was secreted where he could hear every 
word, although Voltaire could not see him. After the 
reading the King remarked to Voltaire that he could 
not possibly be the author of the poem, since a for¬ 
eigner was present who could repeat it from beginning 
to end. The Englishman was called and repeated the 
poem without missing a word. Voltaire was astounded, 
and so vexed that he tore his manuscript up. Then 



RELATION TO GENERAL MENTAL POWER. 


I I I 


the matter was explained, and he wrote his poem down 
again from a second repetition by the Englishman. 

In the church of St. Peter, at Cologne, the altar- 
piece is a large and valuable picture by Rubens, repre¬ 
senting the martyr and son of the apostle. This 
picture having been carried away by the French in 
1805, to the great regret of the inhabitants, a painter of 
that city undertook to make a copy of it from recollec¬ 
tion ; and succeeded in doing so in such a manner, that 
the most delicate tints of the original are preserved 
with the most minute accuracy. The original painting 
has now been restored, but the copy is preserved along 
with it; and even when they are rigidly compared, it is 
scarcely possible to distinguish the one from the 
other. Cicero, speaking of the celebrated Roman 
orator, Hortentius, says that “ Nature had given him so 
happy a memory, that he never had need of committing 
to writing any discourse which he had meditated, while, 
after his opponent had finished speaking, he could 
recall, word by word, not only what the other had said, 
but also the authorities which had been cited against 
himself.” It is related of the same person that he once 
sat by the side of an auctioneer during the day, and in 
the evening told from memory who had bought each 
article and how much he had paid for it. These state¬ 
ments, being compared with the record kept by the 
clerk of the sale, were found to be correct in every 
particular. Themistocles could call by name every 
one of the twenty thousand Athenian citizens. Pliny 
says Cyrus knew the name of every soldier in his army. 


I 12 


REPRESENTATION. 


Dr. Wallis, of Oxford, on one occasion at night, in 
bed, proposed to himself a number of fifty-three places, 
and found its square root to twenty-seven places, and, 
without writing down numbers at all, dictated the result 
from memory twenty days afterward. It was not 
unusual with him to perform arithmetical operations 
in the dark, as the extraction of roots to forty decimal 
places. The distinguished Euler, blind from early life, 
had always in his memory a table of the first six pow¬ 
ers of all numbers from one to one hundred. On one 
occasion two of his pupils, calculating a converging 
series, on reaching the seventeenth term found their 
results differing by one unit at the fiftieth figure, 
and in order to decide which was correct, Euler 
went over the whole in his head, and his decision 
was found afterward to be correct. Magliabechi, 
librarian of the Duke of Tuscany, had one of the 
most remarkable memories of modern times. To 
test his memory, a gentleman of Florence lent him 
at one time a manuscript he had prepared for the 
press, and some time afterward went to him with a 
sorrowful face and pretended to have lost his manu¬ 
script by accident. The poor author seemed incon¬ 
solable, and begged Magliabechi to recollect what he 
could and write it down. He assured the unfortunate 
man that he would, and, setting about it, wrote out 
the entire manuscript without missing a word. He 
had a local memory also, knowing where every book 
stood. One day the Grand Duke sent for him to 
inquire if he could procure a book which was very 


RELATION TO GENERAL MENTAL POWER. I 13 

scarce. “No, sir,” answered Magliabechi, “it is impos¬ 
sible ; there is but one in the world; that is in the 
Grand Seigniors library at Constantinople, and is 
the seventh book on the seventh shelf, on the right 
hand as you go in." Napoleon, Pascal, Leibnitz 
and Carlyle, all had very strong memories. Macau¬ 
lay had, perhaps, the best possessed by any eminent 
English “man of letters.” He once said that if 
“Paradise Lost” were wiped out of existence he could 
replace it from memory. 

GOOD MEMORIES AND POOR INTELLECTS. 

The examples thus far given are of good memories 
united with other powers correspondingly well devel¬ 
oped. There are many curious cases of strong memory 
showing itself in persons whose general faculties were 
weak, or at best only medium. There was a young 
Corsican who could, without hesitating, repeat thirty- 
six thousand names in the order in which he heard 
them, and then go through the list, reversing the order. 
A young woman of some twenty years, partially insane, 
could name the counties with their respective county- 
seats, of every state in the Union. She was also 
remarkably quick in certain kinds of computation. 
The following are taken from Ribot’s “ Diseases of 
Memory”; he himself borrows them from various 
sources. An idiot could remember the day when 
every person had been buried in the parish for thirty- 
five years, and could repeat with unvarying accuracy 

the name and age of the deceased, and the mourners at 
8 


REPRESENTATION. 


114 

the funeral. Out of the line of burials he had not one 
idea, could not give an intelligible reply to a single 
question, nor be trusted even to feed himself. Certain 
idiots, unable to make the most elementary arithmetical 
calculations, repeat the whole of the multiplication 
table without an error. Others recite, word for word, 
passages that have been read to them, but cannot 
learn the letters of the alphabet. Drobisch reports the 
following case of which he was an observer: A boy 
of fourteen, almost an idiot, experienced great trouble 
in learning to read. He had, nevertheless, a marvelous 
facility for remembering the order in which words and 
letters succeeded one another. When allowed two or 
three minutes in which to glance over the page of 
a book printed in a language which he did not know, 
or treating of subjects of which he was ignorant, he 
could, in the brief time mentioned, repeat every word 
from memory exactly as if the book remained open 
before him. An idiot, in a fit of anger, told of a 
complicated incident of which he had been a witness 
long before, and which at the time seemed to have 
made no impression upon him. 


QUICK LEARNERS. 

It is frequently the case that a person who learns 
readily has not a very tenacious memory, and on the 
other hand that one who is somewhat slow in gathering 
ideas holds them fast when once he has grasped them. 
Occasionally, however, we find a man whose memory 
is both quick and firm. Such a man was Macaulay. 


GOOD MEMORIES AND POOR INTELLECTS. 115 

He read with wonderful rapidity, and could always 
recollect what he had read. It is related that he 
was once riding in a coach when the conversation 
turned upon a certain new book which one of the 
party had with him. Macaulay had not seen it. 
The one with whom he had been talking dropped 
into a doze for a few moments, and Macaulay picked 
up the book and looked through it. When the gentle¬ 
man awoke he was surprised to hear Macaulay enter 
into a somewhat elaborate criticism upon the book, 
quoting long passages from it to enforce his views. 
“ I thought you had not read the book,” said he. “ I 
had not,” was the reply; “but I read it while you 
were sleeping.” 

INFLUENCE OF DISEASE. 

The effects of disease upon memory are extremely 
various and curious. A few examples will be given 
of the different ways in which disease acts, without 
dwelling upon the laws which are supposed to govern 
these effects; first, because they are not well under¬ 
stood, and second, because even if they were definitely 
settled, they are too complex and obscure to be avail¬ 
able for our present purpose. A number of instances 
have already been given in the two sections relating 
to duration of memory and contiguity of place, which 
also illustrate the matter now under consideration. 

An Italian gentleman, mentioned by Dr. Rush, 
who died of the yellow fever in New York, in the 
beginning of his illness spoke English, in the middle 
of it French, but on the day of his death he spoke 


REPRESENTATION. 


I 16 

only Italian. A Lutheran clergyman, of Philadelphia, 
informed Dr. Rush that Germans and Swedes, of whom 
he had a considerable number in his congregation, 
when near death always prayed in their native lan¬ 
guages, though some of them, he was confident, had 
not spoken these languages for fifty or sixty years. 
Dr. Gregory was accustomed to mention in his lectures 
the case of a clergyman, who, while laboring under a 
disease of the brain, spoke nothing but Hebrew, which 
was ascertained to be the last language he had acquired. 
An English lady, mentioned by Dr. Prichard, in recov¬ 
ering from an apoplectic attack, always spoke to her 
attendants in French, and had actually lost the knowl¬ 
edge of the English language ; this continued about a 
month. Dr. Beattie speaks of a gentleman, who, 
having received a blow on the head, lost his knowledge 
of Greek, but seemed not to have lost anything else. 
A disease or injury sometimes leaves the memory of 
things happening before the trouble uninjured, while 
no trace remains of the period beginning with the 
injury. On the other hand, the precise opposite some¬ 
times occurs, the patient having a perfect recollection 
of the injury, but not of his past life. A young 
clergyman, when on the point of being married, suf¬ 
fered an injury of the head by which his understanding 
was entirely and permanently deranged. He lived in 
this condition till the age of eighty; and to the last 
talked of nothing but his approaching wedding, and 
expressed impatience for the arrival of the happy day. 
A respectable surgeon was thrown from his horse 


INFLUENCE OF DISEASE. 


11 7 

while riding in the country, and was carried into an 
adjoining house in a state of insensibility. From this 
he very soon recovered, described the accident dis¬ 
tinctly, and gave minute directions in regard to his own 
treatment. In particular, he requested that he might 
be immediately bled ; the bleeding was repeated at his 
own desire, two hours after; and he conversed cor¬ 
rectly regarding his feelings and the state of his pulse 
with the medical man who visited him. In the evening 
he was so far recovered as to be able to be removed 
to his own house, and a medical friend accompanied 
him in the carriage. As they drew near home, the 
latter made some observation respecting precautions 
calculated to prevent unnecessary alarm to the wife 
and family of the patient, when, to his astonishment, 
he discovered that his friend had lost all idea of having 
either a wife or children. This condition continued 
during the following day, and it was only on the third 
day, and after further bleeding, that the circumstances 
of his past life began to recur to his mind. Again, 
sometimes, the patient completely loses memory of a 
certain period, as in the following case : “ A young 

woman, married to a man whom she loved passionately, 
was seized during confinement with prolonged fainting, 
at the end of which she lost all recollection of what 
had occurred since her marriage, inclusive of that cere¬ 
mony. She remembered very clearly the rest of her 
life up to that point. * * * At first she pushed 

her husband and child from her with evident alarm. 
She has never recovered recollection of this period of 


REPRESENTATION. 


118 

her life, nor of any of the impressions received during 
that time. Her parents and friends have convinced 
her that she is married and has a son. She believes 
their testimony, because she would rather think - that 
she has lost a year of her life than that all her asso¬ 
ciates are imposters. But conviction and consciousness 
are not united. She looks upon husband and child 
without being able to realize how she gained the one 
and gave birth to the other.” 

After attacks of apoplexy it quite frequently occurs 
that persons lose memory of words and names while 
they yet have a clear conception of the things and 
persons represented by them. One gentleman knew 
his friends as well as ever, but he could not name 
them. Walking one day in the street he met a gentle¬ 
man to whom he was very anxious to communicate 
something respecting a mutual friend. After various 
ineffectual attempts to make him understand whom he 
meant, he at last seized him by the arm and dragged 
him through several streets to the house of the gentle¬ 
man of whom he was speaking, and pointed to the 
name-plate on the door. Another could not be made 
to understand the name of an object if it was spoken 
to him, but understood it perfectly when it was written. 
His mental faculties were so entire, that he was en¬ 
gaged in most extensive agricultural concerns, and he 
managed them with perfect correctness, by means of a 
remarkable contrivance. He kept before him, in the 
room where he transacted his business, a list of the 
words which were most apt to occur in his intercourse 


INFLUENCE OF DISEASE. I 19 

with his workmen. When one of these wished to com¬ 
municate with him on any subject, he first heard what 
the workman had to say, but without understanding 
him further than simply to catch the words. He then 
turned to the words in his written list, and whenever 
they met his eye he understood them perfectly. These 
particulars I had from his son, a gentleman of high 
intelligence. Another frequent modification consists 
in putting one name for another, but always using the 
words in the same sense. An example of this also 
occurred in the gentleman last mentioned. He uni¬ 
formly called his snuff-box a hogshead and the associa¬ 
tion which led to this appeared to be obvious. In the 
early part of his life he had been in Virginia, and con¬ 
nected with the trade in tobacco; so that the run of 
his thoughts from snuff to tobacco, and from tobacco 
to a hogshead, seemed natural. 

LAW GOVERNING FORGETFULNESS. 

The law governing the loss of memory of signs, 
that is, forgetting all the ways we have of telling others 
anything, seems to be pretty well ascertained. Amne¬ 
sia (loss of memory) of language and signs progresses 
from proper names to substantives, then to adjectives 
and verbs, then to the language of the emotions, and 
finally to gestures. This destructive movement does 
not take place at random ; it is governed by a vigorous 
principle — from the least organized to the most organ¬ 
ized, from complex to simple, from the least automatic 
to the most automatic. When forgetfulness of signs is 


120 


REPRESENTATION. 


complete and recovery begins, do they return in inverse 
order to that in which they disappeared? Illustrations 
are rare. I find, however, a case recorded by Dr. 
Grasset of a man who was seized with complete 
inability of expressing his thoughts, either by speech, 
by writing, or by gestures. After a time the faculty of 
expression returned little by little, first manifesting 
itself through gestures, then through speech and 
writing. 

With one example of loss of memory so complete 
that re-education was necessary, this part of the sub¬ 
ject will be closed. A clergyman, of rare talent and 
energy, of sound education, was thrown from his car¬ 
riage and received a violent concussion of the brain. 
For several days he remained utterly unconscious, and 
when restored his intellect was observed to be in a 
state similar to that of a naturally intelligent child. 
Although in middle life, he commenced his English 
and classic studies under tutors, and was progressing 
satisfactorily when, after several months’ successful 
study, his memory gradually returned, and his mind 
resumed all its wonted vigor and its former wealth 
and polish of culture. 


FAILURE OF MEMORY IN AGE. 

One of the best known phenomena of memory is. 
the gradual failure of it in old people as they increase 
in age. The loss of it seems to be generally in about 
the same order as in disease: proper names first, and 
then other things. Some very curious incidents have, 



FAILURE OF MEMORY IN AGE. 


I 2 I 


on account of failing memory, happened to distin¬ 
guished persons. A few of these will be given for 
the interest they possess. When Linnaeus was getting 
old (he died at the age of seventy-one) the reading of 
his own books gave him much pleasure. Sometimes 
while reading them he would cry out, forgetting that 
he was the author, “ How beautiful! What would I 
not give to have written that! ” 

On day some one recited to Sir Walter Scott a poem 
which pleased him, and he inquired the author. It was 
one of his own. 

It is said that Emerson, after attending Longfellow’s 
funeral, was unable to remember whose it was. It will 
be remembered that Emerson himself died only a little 
over a month later than his brother poet, at the advanced 
age of nearly seventy-nine years. 

A lady was driving out with the poet Rogers, then 
ninety years old, and asked him after an acquaintance 
whom he could not recollect. “ He pulled the check¬ 
string, and appealed to his servant: ‘Do I know Lady 
M.?’ The reply was, ‘Yes, sir.’ This was a painful 
moment to us both. Taking my hand, he said, ‘ Never 
mind, my dear, I am not yet compelled to stop the 
carriage and ask if I know you ! ’ ” 

MEMORY IN ANIMALS. 

Some animals appear to possess memories almost as 
tenacious as that of man. The mocking bird remem¬ 
bers the tunes it hears, and repeats them. The parrot 
acquires a small stock of words, which it often uses very 


122 


REPRESENTATION. 


appropriately. All kinds of domestic animals learn to 
know their masters and their homes, and most of them 
can be taught various tricks. Horses have been known 
to observe how gates were opened, and remember the 
process well enough to perform the operation them¬ 
selves. Both dogs and cats will open doors that are 
fastened by latch. A soldier of Pondicherry, who 
commonly carried to one of these animals [elephants] 
a certain measure of arrack every time that he received 
his pay, having one day drank more than common, and 
seeing himself pursued by the guard, who threatened 
to conduct him to prison, took refuge under the ele¬ 
phant and slept there. It was in vain that the guard 
attempted to draw him out from this asylum; the 
elephant defended him with his trunk. Hours after 
the soldier, become sober, was struck with terror to 
find himself lying under an animal of this enormous 
bulk. The elephant, who, no doubt, perceived his 
consternation, caressed him with his trunk to remove 
his fears, and made him understand that he might 
depart freely. 

An English friend not long ago told me a story 
which he heard in his boyhood. It well illustrates 
the remarkable power of memory in dogs. A gentle¬ 
man in England owned a fine large dog, of which he 
was very fond. One day the animal was missing. 
Rewards were offered, but no trace could be found 
of him, and the search was finally given up. Many 
years afterward the gentleman was traveling in a dis¬ 
tant part of the country, and stopped over night at 


MEMORY IN ANIMALS. 


I23 


a small inn. During the night he was wakened by 
a slight noise, and found in the room two burglars 
and a large dog. The men were talking of killing 
him. He sprang out of bed, and the dog was about 
to attack him, when suddenly it stopped, looked at 
him, and then turned against the burglars. With its 
assistance he succeeded in defeating the robbers and 
putting them to flight. Upon striking a light, the 
dog proved to be the one he had lost so long before, 
and which had never forgotten him. 


ARBITRARY ASSOCIATION. 

As we recollect only by means of association, 
attempts have been made ever since very early times to 
utilize the principles of association in forming systems 
of mnemonics (contrivances to hold facts in the 
memory), by the aid of which we might be able to 
recollect whatever we wished without much difficulty. 
Various expedients scarcely deserving the name of 
system are commonly resorted to, as for instance, 
tying a string around the finger, turning a ring so that 
the set shall be next the palm of the hand, associating 
a person whose name you wish to remember with some 
friend or eminent person with whose name you are 
quite familiar. From the same principle is derived the 
idea of putting things into the form of a song, as, for 
example, the many geography songs, grammar songs, 
the logic songs, which all ex-students remember, about 
Barbara and Celarent, and especially the very well 


124 


REPRESENTATION. 


known verse running: “Thirty days have September, 
April, June, and November,” etc. 

What is probably the oldest system of mnemonics, 
or artificial memory, is attributed to the Greek poet 
Simonides, who lived in the fifth century before Christ, 
a description of which is adapted from an English 
encyclopedia: “You choose a very spacious and 
diversely arranged place — a large house, for instance, 
divided into several apartments. You impress on the 
mind with care whatever is remarkable in it; so that 
the mind may run through all the parts without hesi- 

r 

tation or delay. Then, if you have to remember a 
series of ideas, you place the first in the hall, the 
second in the parlor, and so on with the rest, going 
over the windows, the rooms, to the ornaments, and 
several objects of furniture. Then, when you wish to 
recall the succession, you commence going over the 
house in the order fixed, and in connection with each 
apartment you will find the idea that you attached to 
it. The principle of the method is, that it is more easy 
for the mind to associate a thought with a well-known 
place than to associate the same thought with the next 
thought without any helps whatever. Orators are 
said to have used the method for remembering their 
speeches. The method has been extensively taught by 

writers on mnemonics in modern times. 

OBJECTION TO THESE SYSTEMS. 

But there is a very grave objection to all these 
systems of artificial memory. However efficacious 



OBJECTION TO THESE SYSTEMS. 125 

they may be in preserving matters for recollection — 
and in a well-disciplined mind I do not believe such 
a system could find any place, or do any good — the 
matters so committed to memory are always there¬ 
after associated with the objects in connection with 
which they were placed. Who wants the figures of 
tables and chairs and rooms flitting about among his 
ideas of some fine oration that he has heard, or some 
great book that he has read? We should prefer to 
have our memories of these things a little less in 
quantity rather than to have them degraded by 
trifling associations. 

CULTIVATION OF MEMORY. 

But may the memory itself be cultivated to such 
a degree that there will be no need of these artificial 
systems? It may. We possess no faculty which may 
not be very much increased in power, and memory 
is one of those most susceptible of improvement. The 
rules for its cultivation can be very readily derived 
from what has been' said above under the various 
sections on the laws of association. There is also 
a likeness with the physical powers which will help 
to make this matter plain. The man who exercises 
any set of muscles will have those muscles stronger 
than the man who does not. As exercise makes the 
bones, muscles and lungs strong, so the first and 
all-important thing to be attended to by the person 
who wishes to improve his memory is exercise. This 
statement can be enforced by an unlimited number 



126 


REPRESENTATION. 


of facts; a few, however, will suffice. It is a com¬ 
mon remark that people have not so good memories 
now as they did have before the invention of printing. 
The reason is, that they can now get books and papers 
cheap, and there find whatever they want to know; 
hence they do not take the trouble to fix things firmly 
on their minds. The same remark is true, and in a 
still higher degree, of students and literary men. 
Being constantly employed with books and paper 
and pencil, they know better than others where 
knowledge of all kinds is stored, and hence have 
less necessity for recollection. And if anything must 
be kept in mind, a note is usually made of it. For 
these reasons they have not generally so good mem¬ 
ories as business men. 

Thurlow Weed, who had a remarkably tenacious 
and ready memory, related, not very long before his 
death, how he got it. He said that when he com¬ 
menced life as an editor and politician, the chief 
obstacle he had to combat with was an extremely poor 
memory, which could not retain faces, names, dates, 
engagements, or anything else. The method he 
adopted for its improvement was to try to recall at 
night as much as possible of the day’s doings. At first 
he could recollect but very little, but he persevered, 
and soon began to notice a slight betterment. The 
idea now occurred to him that this might be made 
more interesting and profitable if, instead of thinking 
the day over to himself, he should tell his wife what 
had happened. So she became his confessor, and 


CULTIVATION OF MEMORY. 


127 


continued to serve in that capacity until her death. 
He improved till he could tell her everything,— whom 
he had met, and what had been said, the editorials he 
had written, what he had eaten for dinner, all the little 
incidents of the day; and the process was not only 
interesting to both of them, but highly profitable as a 
drill for his memory. 

The first and chief rule for the improvement of the 
memory is, therefore,— exercise it! And in all drills 
for the memory the two important points are attention 
and repetition. 


ATTENTION. 

Cultivate a habit of close attention to whatever 
happens about you. An hour of close, vigorous appli¬ 
cation, is worth two hours spent in a rambling, listless 
survey of any subject. It is said by those who have 
tried it, that the “ half-day system ” of teaching little 
children in the primary schools is a complete success. 
It is claimed that the child learns more in the half day 
than he did before in the whole day. The reason is 
that the time spent in the school room is so short that 
his active, earnest attention can be gained for the 
whole period, while when he has to stay in the room all 
day, he gets languid and weary, and pays attention to 
nothing. Acquire the habit of correct association. 
Trace the relations existing between the new fact and 
the facts with which you were already acquainted. 
Turn the matter over in your mind until you are sure 
you understand it in all its bearings and phases. Do 




128 


REPRESENTATION. 


not be content with a half knowledge of it; know 
it all. 

REPETITION. 

Recall it as often as possible; keep it before the 
mind until it gets fixed in its position by habit. Then 
there will be little difficulty in recollecting it whenever 
you wish, by any one of the dozen chains of association 
to which you have attached it. 







'iGDAGINATIOfl. 


ERHAPS the best key to the meaning of 
the word imagination, is the derivation of it. 
It comes from the Latin word imago , image, 
or picture. So, imagination is the imaging 
or picturing power of the mind. It differs 
from memory, as has already been pointed 
out, in this, that memory only recalls feel¬ 
ings, ideas, or facts, which the mind has 
before experienced, or learned, while the 
imagination pictures new scenes and creates new com¬ 
binations. It is not necessary that the object should 
have existed in the mind before. We may imagine 
things that never had existence, nay, that never could 
have existence. The power is, however, often called 
into use in remembering something which we have seen 
or heard, or in some other way come into contact with. 
Thus, I may have seen a fine building somewhere, ten 
years ago, and I now remember many of its more strik¬ 
ing features, but I could scarcely recall the small 
points. Imagination comes to the aid of recollection, 
and the result is a picture in my mind of the building, 
complete and beautiful, varying slightly in all likeli¬ 
hood, from the original building, but approximating 

very closely to it. 

9 



129 



















V 

130 IMAGINATION. 

The imagination may be said, in its widest sense, to 
mean the same as invention, denoting that faculty of 
the mind by which it either “ bodies forth the form of 
things unknown,” or produces original thoughts or new 
combinations of ideas from material stored up in the 
memory. The fancy may be considered that peculiar 
habit which presents to our choice all the different 
materials that serve the efforts of the imagination. 
This faculty is the great spring of human activity, and 
the principal source of human improvement. As it 
delights in presenting to the mind scenes and charac¬ 
ters more perfect than those which we are acquainted 
with, it prevents us from ever being completely satisfied 
with our present condition or with our past attain¬ 
ments, and engages us continually in the pursuit of 
some untried enjoyment, or of some higher excellence. 
“The truth of it is,” says Addison; “I look upon a 
sound imagination as the greatest blessing in life, next 
to a clear judgment and a good conscience.” 


THE FOUNDATION OF ART. 

This is the power which makes the painter, the 
poet, the musician, the sculptor, the architect. It is 
the power which transforms the homely things we see 
about us into wondrous forms of beauty. It presents us 
fairer scenes than ever were known, mountains more 
lofty and rugged, storms that lash the sea into a wilder 
fury, and blind us with a more vivid glare of lightning, 
lakes calmer and bluer and brighter, forests more 
somber and silent and sad. The humble cottage dis- 

o 


THE FOUNDATION OF ART. 131 

solves, and in its stead rises a gorgeous palace, stretch¬ 
ing away column after column into the distance. High 
in the air towers its mighty dome ; its pillars are of 
Parian marble carved into forms marvelously fair. 
Golden fountains throw aloft the richest, brightest 
sparkling wine. The walls and floor and ceiling are 
filled with pictures made by hands more skilled 
than Raphael’s or Michael Angelo’s. Sweet odors of 
many flowers pervade the atmosphere. Angelic forms 
float about, singing songs more thrilling than ever 
mortal heard ; and amid all this varied loveliness, the 
kingliest kings and the fairest dames of history and 
romance stroll arm in arm together. 


DEITIES. 

Imagination gives to Heaven its charms, and to 
hell its horrors. Imagination peopled the woods and 
streams of Greece and Italy with nymphs and fauns. 
It made craggy Mount Olympus the home of royal 
Jove and his court of gods. It gave to the rude Scan¬ 
dinavians of the North their strong-god, Thor, with the 
mighty hammer. It has filled the mountains and 
plains of Europe with a delightful race of fairies. It is 
always and everywhere clothing cold, hard fact with 
grace and loveliness, multiplying the enjoyments of 
life a hundred fold. “By imagination,” says Addison, 
“ a man in a dungeon is capable of entertaining himself 
with scenes and landscapes more beautiful than any 
that can be found in the whole compass, of nature.” 


i 3 2 


IMAGINATION. 


THE ARTIST AGAIN. 

It is needless to tell of what use the faculty of 
imagination is to the artist; for to whatever form 
of art he may devote himself, imagination is, and must 
be, the soul of his every undertaking. By imagination 
alone could the unknown sculptor have conceived that 
marvelous statue of Apollo, which has been the 
wonder and delight of the thousands upon thousands 
of visitors who have thronged the Vatican during 
the last three hundred and seventy-five years. Reason 
and memory and judgment all would have been power¬ 
less for such a task. Where else but in his imagination 
could Raphael have seen his “Madonna” and “Trans¬ 
figuration?” Or Milton, old and blind, have seen his 
Eden ? Or Beethoven, completely deaf, have heard 
his majestic symphonies and sonatas ? Or how else 
but by the aid of a soaring imagination could Christo¬ 
pher Wren have planned the great St. Paul’s cathedral, 
the glory of London ? 


OTHERS THAN ARTISTS. 

But artists are not the only class of mental workers 
who must depend upon imagination for a large part of 
their power. The historian must not only know many 
facts about the age of which he is to write, but he must 
have an imagination capable of arranging those facts, 
and filling up the gaps between them, so as to present 
a complete and living picture of the age. His Crom¬ 
well must not be “a wretched politico-metaphysical 


OTHERS THAN ARTISTS. 


1 JO 

abstraction,” a mere bundle of ambition, hypocrisy, 
cruelty and fanaticism, mixed in such and such 
proportions. He must be to the historian and his 
reader a real flesh and blood, bone and sinew, nerve 
and brain man — a man walking among his fellow-men, 
toiling with them, meeting obstacles and overcoming 
them, possessed of human affections and human weak¬ 
nesses, gloomy and despondent at times, again filled 
with a sustaining confidence in the righteousness of his 
cause. This he must be, yet this he cannot be without 

a great effort of the imagination on the part of the 

% 

historian to transport himself into Cromwell’s age and 
see him and his surroundings just as they were. The 
readers of history, or science, or fiction, and the 
observers of pictures, and statuary and buildings, must 
be endowed with strong imagination, in order that they 
may be able to comprehend and appreciate the works 
they see. The unimaginative person can perceive no 
beauty or nobility in the finest works of art. 

The inventor, or mechanic, or philosopher, must have 
imagination enough to enable him to look forward and 
see what his completed plan or system will be, and to 
what results it will lead. The orator needs imagina¬ 
tion, that he may embody his strong thoughts and 
arguments in words that shall reach straight home to 
the hearts of his hearers. 

THEORY. 

There are several matters of theory upon which it 
would not be profitable for us to dwell. For instance, 



134 


IMAGINATION. 


there is a dispute as to whether the faculty of imagina¬ 
tion is a simple or a complex one; another, as to 
whether it is partly voluntary or wholly spontaneous; 
another, as to whether it is always passive in its nature 
or sometimes active and sometimes passive. All these 
questions, interesting enough in themselves, but not 
entering into the plan of this book, may be found 
discussed in any good treatise upon psychology. 

EXCESSIVE IMAGINATION. 

We have pointed out some of the uses of the 
imagination; it is sometimes abused, and becomes 
even detrimental to the possessor. Some persons — 
not very many — are so highly gifted with this faculty, 
that they can find no satisfaction for their aesthetic 
natures in the realm of reality, but are compelled to 
live constantly in the unreal, among creations of their 
own. Such a person is unfitted for life among the 
coarser natures that surround him, and when he 
mingles in the bustling, pushing affairs of the world, as 
every one must sometimes do, he often gets sadly 
jostled and buffeted about. Such men were Rousseau, 
and Shelley, and Keats. Those who find themselves 
so constituted, ought to restrain their luxuriant imag¬ 
inations and try to cultivate a more matter-of-fact way 
of looking at things. They should mingle freely in 
society, and take an active part in business life. Not 
that they should destroy or maim their heaven-given 
faculty, but they should protect it against assault by an 
armor of practical philosophy. Such imaginations are 



EXCESSIVE IMAGINATION. 


135 


exotic in this nineteenth century of ours — and indeed 
in any century — and need to be carefully housed 
against the chill northwest storms that may blow down 
upon them from the “practical,” unfeeling, money¬ 
getting world. 


CULTIVATION. 

But, as was said above, such persons are rare. Nine 
hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand should cul¬ 
tivate rather than restrain their powers of imagination. 
And the question now comes, how ? Read the works 
of the world’s greatest poets and orators. Read them, 
I mean, not with the eyes and mouth only, but with 
the mind and heart as well. Enter to the utmost limit 
of your power into the world they lived in and strove 
to represent. Get out of yourself and the United 
States, and the nineteenth century, and back into the 
manners and time and place which the poet or speaker 
wishes to exhibit to you. “ Whoever wants to under¬ 
stand the poet, must go into the poet’s land,” says 
Goethe. If you are reading history, strive not only 
to comprehend the facts and remember them, but 
try also to get back into the time which you are 
studying, and live in it. Macaulay said he owed his 
surprising knowledge of the minutiae of history to 
his practice of day-dreaming, fancying himself a sub¬ 
ject of one of the Henrys, say, and hunting up all 
the details of life in that age — where the streets and 
public resorts of London were, what men were leaders 
at that time, and how they looked, what sort of clothes 




IMAGINATION. 


136 

people wore, what kind of houses they lived in, and 
a hundred other items. It is said that he became as 
familiar with the life of ancient Athens and Rome 
as most men are with that of their own country and 
generation. A person trying to cultivate his imagi¬ 
nation can also gain great good from an attentive study 
of ereat works of art and the beautiful scenes which 

o 

nature furnishes us. Works of art worth looking at 
may not be accessible to us, but no one is so poor, no 
one lives in so flat and uninviting a country, that he 
may not almost any morning ■ or evening see sights 
which, if properly regarded, will surely elevate him, 
and give him more exalted ideas and keener feeling 
of beauty. 

A higher effort will be required to produce imagi¬ 
native works of your own. Many persons can appre¬ 
ciate poetry and imaginative prose who could not 
write it themselves. In the one, fancy has only to 
follow in the path that has been made before her; 
in the other, she has to cut out her own way through 
the jungles with no guide or helper — quite a different 
task. But the effort, if made, will be found to be 
not an unprofitable one. It will introduce into your 
life pleasures that you had not dreamed of before, 
higher and purer than those you had known. 

MEN REMARKABLE FOR IMAGINATION. 

Michael Angelo (1474-1563) was of noble descent, 
the families of both his father and mother having long- 
been prominent in Italy. He won early renown by his 



MEN REMARKABLE FOR IMAGINATION. 1 37 

skill and originality in painting and sculpture. He 
spent a great part of his long life in the service of 
various popes, and his most celebrated works are his 
paintings made for them in St. Peters, which greatest 
of all churches is a monument also of his surpassing- 
genius as architect. The city of Florence owed much 
to his skill in civil engineering. In almost everything 
to which he gave his mind, he outstripped his pre¬ 
decessors, and left models not yet equaled. And yet 
the pope kept him employed for years in constructing 
roads, and other tasks, which might better have been 
left to minds of less power. His life was pure, and his 
reputation unsullied by baseness. He refused all 
remuneration for building St. Peter’s, regarding it as 
a service to the glory of God. 

John Milton, after Shakespeare the greatest poet of 
England, was born December 9, 1608. He was very 
carefully educated, completing his course for the 
Master’s degree at the University of Cambridge, and 
supplementing that by several years of hard study at 
his father’s home. His life divides itself into three 
periods of not far from twenty years each, during the 
first of which, his student period, he wrote several 
exquisite short poems, full of all the luxuries a young 
and powerful imagination could bestow. During the 
second, he was busily engaged in the political disputes 
growing out of a civil war. During the third, after 
restoration of monarchy, blind from excessive study, a 
political fugitive, compelled to hide from officers 
seeking his life, he retired within himself, and wrote 


IMAGINATION. 


138 

out of the depths of his soul that great poem, “ Para¬ 
dise Lost,” which verily “the world will not willingly 
let die.” 

Dante, the greatest poet of Italy, and one of the 
greatest of the world, was born of high family, in Flor¬ 
ence, in the year 1265. He received as good an educa¬ 
tion as that age and country afforded, and passed 
through the various grades of public life, until, at the 
age of thirty-five, he rose to the highest dignity the city 
could confer. Now began his trouble. Italy was in the 
midst of her Guelph-Ghibelline troubles at that time, 
and by a sudden turn in affairs, Dante, among others, 
was driven out of his native city. Indeed, at one time 
he was sentenced to be burned alive, if found. He 
never returned to Florence, but wandered about from 
one place to another until his death in 1321. During 
this long exile, he wrote his wonderful poem, “The 
Divine Comedy” — “this poem of the earth and air. 
This mediaeval miracle of song,” this “voice of ten 
silent centuries,” as Carlyle calls it. 

Other men who have had unusual powers of imagi¬ 
nation are Goethe and Schiller, the two greatest poets 
of Germany; Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist of the 
world; Spenser and Shelley, each of whom has been 
styled “the poet’s poet.” Then there are the powerful 
orators, men who move multitudes by their eloquence; 
and eloquence must always depend upon the imagina¬ 
tion for life-like and forcible discriptions and illustra¬ 
tions. Indeed, it is safe to say that every truly great 
mind has a vivid imagination. 



CULTIVATION. 


13 9 


HIGHEST USES OF IMAGINATION. 

«► 

It is the divine attribute of the imagination that it 
cannot be repressed or confused; that when the real 
world is shut out, it can create a world for itself, and 
with a witch-like power can conjure up glorious shapes 
and forms, and brilliant visions, to make solitude popu¬ 
lous, and irradiate the gloom of a dungeon. 

When the imagination takes only the primary 
elements of things seen and combines them into 
entirely new forms, it may fairly be called a creative 
faculty. This is its highest power. 

In the work of a dramatist, or a novelist, the 
characters they write about may be, and generally are, 
specimens of persons the writers have seen; or they 
may be combinations by the mind from the original 
elements of human nature, perhaps true to that nature, 
perhaps not. So, too, in invention. The mind may 
use partial combinations ; or, as in the case of 
Whitney’s cotton gin, the desired end being known, it 
may frame an original and wholly new combination for 
its accomplishment. In these ways imagination works, 
every manner of material being plastic under its eye, 
and it is easy to see that its importance to human 
progress can scarcely be overestimated. 

And not only with general progress is the imagi¬ 
nation intimately connected, but also with individual 
happiness. We have sometimes seen persons with 
strong and active imaginations, that seemed to work 
chiefly to a suspicious tendency. Out of some look or 


140 


IMAGINATION. 


I 


casual expression of a friend, having no real reference 
to them, they would frame guesses that would make 
them wretched and throw them off into a coolness of 
friendly feeling for which none of their associates could 
account. Nothing can be more unhappy. Anything 
but a suspicious temper combined with an active imagi¬ 
nation, for the comfort of the person himself, or of 
those connected with him. How different this should 
be! It should rather be the business of the imagina¬ 
tion to embellish life with trustful and happy pictures, 
and add to its cheerfulness and hope. 

But perhaps the greatest power of imagination over 
life comes from the creation by it of what are called 
ideals, not of art, but of character and conduct. Ideals 
are representations of that which is perfect, or which 
we esteem to be. They are a setting before ourselves 
of lines of conduct such as belong to the higher and 
better parts of our nature. This all can do, and he 
who does not do it, and hold himself to them, is but 
drift-wood driven hither and thither by the circum¬ 
stances in which he may be placed. The man who does 
it is like a vessel bearing on to its port. He has an' 
ideal, an end, a purpose. He is aiming at excellence. 
For a person thus to form the ideal of a perfect life, 
.and to shape his course steadily with reference to it, is 
a great thing. It is a great thing, both for himself 
and for society; it is what is now needed in opposition 
to the loose doctrines that are coming in upon us. 
The moralists tell us that the only real man is the man 
who sticks to reality, and that our business is to live 



CULTIVATION. 


141 

as well as we can, and then trust God for the rest. 
This is certainly a truth, if he lives as well as he can. 
But the vital question is whether the man who stands 
on the ground which is usually called morality is trying 
to climb higher, higher; whether he is endeavoring to 
develop himself; and whether his view of what his own 
life and character ought to be is such that he is led to 
the continual improvement both of his inner nature 
and that part of him which other folks see. “ Living 
as well as we can ” usually consists in a sort of loose 
compliance with the civil laws of the land — which is 
so far right; in a sort of mild obedience to neighbor¬ 
hood custom and rules — which is so far right; in a 
sort of general avoidance of the rougher forms of 
indulgence which public sentiment condemns — which 
is so far right; in an observance of those courtesies on 
which the ease of dealing with our fellows so much 
depends — and that is right. As for the rest, it is said 
that a man should be a good father, a good husband, 
a good neighbor, a good citizen, and a good business 
man. But when you say that this is about all you can 
expect of a man, you violate a fundamental law of 
human nature. Indeed, the law of all nature tends to 
the casting away of things used and the reaching up 
for things higher. This is progress, and he who 
attempts to halt in Nature’s march will be but trodden 
down to perish. 

The healthy imagination is found to be continually 
engaged in picturing more perfect things. This is its 
great work. In the clear light of the other branches 




142 


IMAGINATION. 



of the intellect, warmed into a glow by a sympathetic 
sensibility and held steady by a wise will, it should 
fill a high place in every human character. 


> 






l 














Ihe Reflective Iower. 


N various ways, but principally through the 
medium of the five senses, we gain a knowl¬ 
edge of a vast number of detached facts 
and objects, having, as we learn them, no 
especial connection with each other, and 
hence being of comparatively small value 
to us. They are merely the food of the 
mind ; they furnish the material which the 
Reflective or thinking power may work 
upon and convert into solid mental sub¬ 
stance. 

OUR CHIEF FACULTY. 

This power of abstract thought, reflection, 
is the most exalted of all our intellectual 
It is the one that in the main distinguishes 
man from the lower animals. Without entering just 
now into a discussion of the time-honored question as 
to whether the difference is one of kind, or one cf 
degree only; whether animals do really reason at all or 
not; — it will probably be granted by almost any one 
that animals do not possess the power of reasoning to 
any great extent. In most other respects, man is sur¬ 
passed by many of his inferiors in the animal world. 

143 



i 


faculties. 






















144 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


The ox is stronger than he ; the stag is fleeter ; the fox 
is more cunning; the bull-dog has more physical cour¬ 
age ; the bird has a sweeter voice; the hound has the 
sense of smell more acute ; the eagle has a keener eye ; 
and so on to the end. But there is one power, and 
that the highest, which man has above the brute, and 
which, despite his inferior physical prowess, makes him 
more than a match for any of them, and that is this 
power of thinking, reasoning, reflecting. 


DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN AND MAN. 

It is the relative fineness of this same faculty that 
raises one man above another. In what else consists 
the superiority of the architect over the hod-carrier ? of 
the general over the private soldier? In better bone 
and sinew, better lungs and stronger stomach? Not 
at all. 


“Now in the names of all the gods at once, 

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, 

That he is grown so great?” 

Upon the meat of thought, good Cassius; it is not 
in brawn, but in brain, that Caesar is greater than you. 
That very ordinary body which gives you so much 
sport, sustains a head thronged with mighty thoughts. 
There is the reason why he can ‘'bestride the narrow 
world, like a Colossus.” 

The power of thought, or Reflection, divides itself 
into two branches. First, that of classifying all that 
the mind knows; and second, reasoning upon the things 


DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN AND MAN. 


145 


known. Then there are two kinds of reasoning, 
deductive and probable; and probable again presents 
itself in two forms. But this is all best shown by 
the usual diagram, or analysis, of the subject. 


Classification. 


Reflective Power. < 


w Reasoning. 


' Deductive. 


Probable. 


f Inductive 
tFrom Analogy. 


• Classification. 

If a merchant doing a large business were to put 
down this account on one slip of paper and that 
account on another, and throw all his letters, accounts, 
price-currents, bills, receipts and other business papers 
into one big box, of what value would they be to him ? 
He would still have them all, but he could not use 
them. He must make out some sort of a classifica¬ 
tion of these things, and then give to each its appointed 
place, where he knows that he can find it whenever 
it is wanted. In that way only can he prevent his 
gatherings of various documents from becoming an 
obstacle and a hindrance, rather than a help, to his 
farther progress. So it is with the mind. If it has 
no place to put its rapidly gathering facts and experi¬ 
ence, they will finally clog its way and load it down 
with their enormous weight. The mind must first 

classify its knowledge and put it away upon the proper 
10 





146 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 




shelves; then it may commence its process of reason¬ 
ing, and so create new materials; just as the merchant, 
having all his possessions properly arranged, may use 
them, and thereby get new wealth. 


RELATION TO SCIENCE. 

A hasty glance will be sufficient to show that this 
faculty of putting together, or classifying, is the start¬ 
ing point of all science. Without it there could be no 
general ideas; everything would be particular. We 
could not have much, if any, language. All such 
words and conceptions as horse, dog, house, tree, 
man, city, in short, all common nouns, would be 
swept out of existence. Instead of the general name 
and idea — man — there would only be an infinite num¬ 
ber of individual men, who must be thought of as 
individuals or not at all. It would plainly be impos¬ 
sible for us to keep in mind the names of so many 
distinct objects. But, very wisely, the Creator has 
implanted in us a natural tendency to classify and 
generalize the many experiences of life. Let us try 
to imagine the effect which it has upon science. We 
will suppose a man to be set down for the first 
time in the world, and surrounded by members of 
all the tribes of animals that are known to exist 
upon the earth. At first it would be merely a mat¬ 
ter of amazement to him. He could see no connection 
among the various beasts before him. Presently, 
however, he would notice that while they were not 






CLASSIFICATION. 


H7 

alike, yet many of them had points of similarity. 
For example, a very large number, not resembling 
one another in much else, would be seen to have 
four feet. Others have wings, and can fly; others 
swim, and still others crawl on the ground. Then 
he would form the classes of quadrupeds, birds, 
fishes, and snakes. Taking now the quadrupeds by 
themselves, he would soon see that there were sev¬ 
eral different kinds. Some have horns; these would 
after a while be further classified into cattle, sheep, 
goats, deer, etc. Others, having certain features 
peculiar to themselves, would later be called horses, 
zebras, donkeys, etc. And so the process of division 
would continue until the minute classification of 
modern zoology was reached. 

But not only does the process of division go on ; its 
opposite is also taking place. The first step men¬ 
tioned was of this kind. After a considerable lapse of 
time it would be discovered that the quadrupeds and 
birds and monkeys and some others had at least one 
thing in common which was not possessed by the 
worms and mollusks, namely, a back-bone. Hence 
there would be formed one grand family comprising all 
which had back-bones; and so on until the unit, ani¬ 
mal, was reached. Now, after these thousands of 
classes have been formed, when a new bird, or reptile, 
or other animal, is discovered, the zoologist examines 
it and finds what its characteristics are, and names it 
accordingly. If there should be no class already 
formed whose characteristics are the same as those of 


148 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


the specimen in hand, a new class must be made. 
In this way were formed all the sciences — physical, 
mental, and moral. First, always, a vast collection of 
unarranged, poorly understood facts, then classification 
more and more complete, and hypothesis, and theory, 
and proof, and thus — science. 

TESTIMONY. 

The range of our individual experience is quite 
restricted. Only a few of the millions of things con¬ 
stantly transpiring about us come to our personal 
notice. We saw none of the events which happened 
in the distant past. We must then get an enormously 
large portion of our knowledge through other persons, 
that is, by testimony; and it becomes important that 
we should know the principles by which we may judge 
of the reliability of testimony. Are we to believe 
everything that any one tells us ? Are we to shut our¬ 
selves up and credit nothing that we ourselves have 
not seen or cannot understand ? Or is there an average 
somewhere between these extremes, which, using due 
diligence, we may find and hold fast to? It is evi¬ 
dently our natural tendency to place much confidence 
in whatever is told us. The child believes everything, 
no matter how marvelous, but the man is wary and 
cautious, even skeptical. Where now is the truth ? 

It is plain that there are two things to be taken into 
consideration in. judging of the probable truthfulness 
of any particular statement — the narrator and the 
narration. 



TESTIMONY. 


149 


THE NARRATOR. 

We are naturally much more ready to believe a 
statement when made us by one whose reputation for 
veracity is good than we should be if our informer 
were commonly addicted to falsehood. This effect 
of reputation is heightened by personal experience. 
If we have been told something remarkable by a 
person before, and it has proved to be true, we are 
strongly inclined to trust him a second time, and 
with every renewal of this experience our confidence 
in him gets more complete. On the other hand, a 
man by whom we have once been deceived will get 
but little credence afterward, and especially if the 
deception has been practiced often or in weighty 
matters, we shall regard with great suspicion any¬ 
thing he may say. It is in accordance with this 
well-known principle that witnesses in court have 
their “reputation for truth and veracity” so strictly 
inquired into. 

If two or more persons of good character, without 
in any way colluding for that purpose, unite in a 
statement agreeing upon all the principal points, we 
place much more confidence in them than we should 
in any one of them. If the story is such that no 
possible benefit could accrue to the teller from its 
belief, we are inclined to credit it; doubly so if it 
is one which will rather result in pecuniary loss, 
disgrace, or other misfortune; conversely, if gain is 
evidently to be derived by the party from the story, 


150 THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 

if it is believed, we are apt to be very cautious 
about accepting it as truth. 

Again, we may have all possible confidence in a 
person’s honesty, but little in his ability. In gen¬ 
eral, we will sooner believe anything upon the testi¬ 
mony of a shrewd, capable man, than upon that of 
a child or an idiot. The only exceptions to that 
rule are those cases in which the honesty and sin¬ 
cerity of the man might for some cause be open to 
suspicion. It is often the case that the witness is 
himself deceived. He may be superstitious; he may 
have a very vivid imagination ; he may be timid; 
many things may conspire to make him think he 
sees and hears what he really does not. It may 
also be the case that though his honesty and ability 
are both above suspicion, his opportunities for know¬ 
ing the thing of which he speaks may have been 
defective, and hence his information may not be 
complete and trustworthy. Before placing uncondi¬ 
tional reliance upon any narration, we should satisfy 
ourselves, then, not only of the honesty and disin¬ 
terestedness of our informant, but also of his ability 
to understand the event he tells of, and his full 
opportunity to know it thoroughly. 


THE NARRATION. 

Aside from the character of the witness, there is 
another element of great importance to us in making 
up our verdict of truth or falsity, viz., the character of 
the thing witnessed. We believe something upon an 


TESTIMONY. 


151 

amount and quality of evidence which would be totally 
inadequate to convince us of the truth of other things, 
bor example, I should require but the word of one 
person, and that person need not be one of good char¬ 
acter for truthfulness, to make me believe that a 
certain old, decrepit, sickly man that I knew, had died; 
because the thing is probable in itself; I have long 
been expecting such tidings. I should ask more reli¬ 
able testimony before yielding my belief to a report 
that a young man, whom I saw but an hour ago, appar¬ 
ently in the full bloom of health and activity, had 
suddenly dropped dead; because such an event, 
though not at all impossible, is unlooked for and 
improbable. A very much higher — an extremely 
high — degree of evidence would be necessary in order 
to convince me that the Mississippi river had instan¬ 
taneously and without any warning risen many feet 
and demolished the entire city of St. Louis; because it 
is not only quite out of the range of probabilities, but 
I should think impossible, that any such thing should 
take place. If a thing seems to us improbable, that is, 
if we have never seen or heard of anything like it 
before, we ought to be very cautious about accepting it 
as true. At the same time, there is a possibility of 
carrying our doubting too far. We should recognize 
the fact that not everything is known to us; that many 
things which seem to us absolutely incredible, would, to 
persons of more extended knowledge, be very simple 
and plain. There is a frequently quoted story about a 
Siamese king, who was told by a Dutchman, traveling 



l 5 2 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


in Siam, that in his country water frequently got so 
solid that an elephant might walk on it. “ I have 
believed,” said the king, “many extraordinary things 
which you have told me, because I took you for a man 
of truth and veracity, but now I am convinced that you 
lie.” Had the king ever heard of ice, he would not 
have been surprised at the travelers assertion. We 
are all prone to fall into this fatal mistake of valuing 
too highly the little knowledge and experience which 
we happen to possess. When the King of Siam 
rejected, as an incredible falsehood, the account of the 
freezing of the water, if there had been at his court a 
philosopher who had attended to the properties of 
heat, he would have judged in a different manner, 
though the actual fact of the freezing of water might 
have been as new to him as it was to the king. He 
would have recollected that he had seen various solid 
bodies rendered fluid by the application of heat; and 
that upon the abstraction of the additional heat, they 
again became solid. He would thus have argued the 
possibility, that by a further abstraction of heat, bodies 
might become solid which are fluid in the ordinary 
warmth of climate in his own country. In this manner, 
the fact, which was rejected by the king, judging from 
his own experience, might have been received by the 
philosopher, judging from his knowledge of the powers 
and properties of heat — though he had acquired this 
knowledge from events apparently far removed from 
that to which he now applied it. This illustration 
shows that a phenomenon may seemingly be opposed 



TESTIMONY. 


1 53 


to everything that we have experienced, and yet be in 
perfect accordance with natural laws which, were our 
mental eyes keen enough, we could see at work 
beneath the facts that we know. 

A peculiar credit is commonly given to statements 
made in books, off the platform, and in other public 
ways; why is this ? I suppose that the reason is 
that a statement publicly made is more likely to meet 
denial, if false, than one made in private. Hence, if no 
denial is heard, it is concluded that there was room 
for none, and full confidence is given. By taking into 
consideration all the laws of belief above mentioned, 
we may be able to grade pretty correctly the amount 
of confidence which we are to place in any assertion, 
from absolute, unquestioned belief, to the most decided 
unbelief. The complete intellectual man will carefully 
guard himself from a tendency to ignorant credulity 
on the one hand and narrow-minded skepticism on 
the other ; they are equally pernicious in their effects, 
and alike betray an uncultivated mind. 

DEDUCTIVE REASONING. 

Deductive reasoning is the process of deducing 
particular facts from general principles. Thus, it has 
been found, by observation, that horned animals are 
invariably cud-chewing animals. The cow, the sheep, 
the goat, the deer, all chew their cuds. Now suppose 
we should find an animal new to us, some kind of ante¬ 
lope for example. We see upon its forehead the horns 
which we have learned to regard as a badge of most 


1 54 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


ruminating animals, and we at once conclude that it, 
too, is in the habit of chewing its cud. From the 
general principle that all horned animals chew their 
cuds, we have deduced the particular fact that this new 
antelope, which has horns, chews its cud. 

It will perhaps be both interesting and profitable to 
give a few specimens of mistakes which are commonly 
made in deductive reasoning. Here is a fallacy of that 
class known as arguing in a circle. “ The Bible being 
the word of God, must be true. The Bible declares 
that there is a God, therefore God must exist.” That 
argument (one commonly used by the by), if stated 
in full, is something like this: 


First step. 


Second step. 


r 

\ 


v 


< 


The Bible is the word of God. 

The word of God must be true. 
Therefore the Bible must be true. 
What the Bible says is true. 

The Bible declares that God exists. 
Therefore God exists. 


Now the trouble with the argument is this. In the 
first step we assume that there is a God and that what 
He says must be true, and that the Bible is His word, 
and from these three assumptions, none of which we 
have any right to make, prove that the Bible is truth. 
In the second step we start with the conclusion reached 
in the first step, and prove from it that God exists. 
That is, we prove the Bible by God, and then turn 
around and prove God by the Bible. 

The world within and around us swarms with evi¬ 
dences of the existence of God, but this is not one 






DEDUCTIVE REASONING. 


155 


of them ; and it is unfortunate that some over-zealous 
defenders of the faith have resorted to such fallacious 
arguments as the above to prove what does not need 
more proof. The keen eye of the skeptic detects 
these falsities, and he proceeds in great glee to tear 
them down, thinking that thereby he saps the found¬ 
ations of the building. Not so ; he has only torn away 
the ugly scaffolding that had been put up by some 
awkward workmen, and which obscured the view of 
the mansion. 

There is an anecdote of Charles II. and Milton, 
which forms an excellent illustration of the fallacv 

J 

known by the logicians under the name of non causa 
pro causa , that is, a fallacy which consists in the 
assumption of one thing as the cause of another, when 
perhaps it is not. Think you not, said the king, “ that 
the crime which you committed against my father must 
have been very great, seeing that Heaven has seen fit 
to punish it by such a severe loss as that which you 
have sustained?” (Milton had lost his sight as the 
immediate result of intense labor on his “ Defense of 
the English People for the Beheading of Charles I.”) 
“Nay, sire,” Milton replied; “if my crime on that 
accomit be adjudged great, how much greater must 
have been the criminality of your father, seeing that I 
have only lost my eyes, but he lost his head!” The 
fault in the king’s argument of course lies in assuming 
that Milton’s blindness was a punishment inflicted by 
Heaven for the part he had taken in abetting the 
execution of Charles I. 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


156 

From the time of Aristotle down almost to the 
present time, Deductive reasoning has held the post 
of honor. This it has not deserved. Though very 
curious and very useful in many ways, in its two thou¬ 
sand years of life it has not done half as much for the 
advancement of mankind as its young rival, Inductive 
reasoning, has within the last two hundred. Its princi¬ 
pal use now is as a supplement and corrective of the 
inductive method. It has sometimes been claimed that 
deduction never originated anything, and is therefore 
useless. I cannot go quite so far as that, however. If 
it has not absolutely created new ideas, it is constantly 
bringing out into relief those which, though contained 
in others, were invisible. Besides, it acts as a powerful 
corrective of induction and analogy in the wild flights 
which they sometimes take. I will close this subject 
with the following fine eulogy and illustration from Dr. 
Brown. “ The truths at which we arrive by repeated 
intellectual analysis, may be said to resemble the pre¬ 
mature plant which is to be found inclosed in that 
which is itself inclosed in the bulb, or seed, which we 
dissect. 'We must carry on our dissection more and 
more minutely to arrive at each new germ; but we do 
arrive at one after the other, and when our dissection is 
obliged to stop, we have reason to suppose that still 
finer instruments, and still finer eyes, might prosecute 
the discovery almost to infinity. It is the same in the 
discovery of the truths of reasoning. The stage at 
which one inquirer stops is not the limit of analysis in 
reference to the object, but the limit of the analytic 


DEDUCTIVE REASONING. 


157 


power of the individual. Inquirer after inquirer dis¬ 
covers truths which were involved in truths formerly 
admitted by us, without our being able to perceive what 
was comprised in our admission. There may be races 
of beings, at least we can conceive of a race of beings, 
whose senses would enable them to perceive the ulti¬ 
mate embryo plant inclosed in its innumerable series of 
preceding germs; and there may, perhaps, be created 
powers of some higher order, as we know that there is 
one Eternal Power, able to feel, in a single comprehen¬ 
sive thought, all those truths, of which the generations 
of mankind are able, by successive steps, to discover 
only a few that are, perhaps, to the great truths which 
they contain, only as the flower, which is blossoming 
before us, is to that infinity of future blossoms envel¬ 
oped in it, with which, in ever renovated beauty, it is to 
adorn the summers of other ages.” 

Besides deductive, there is, under the head of prob¬ 
able reasoning, both inductive reasoning and reasoning 
from analogy. 

INDUCTIVE REASONING. 

The word inductive means bringing in, while deduct¬ 
ive means leading out. We have seen how deduction 
gets a single fact out of a general rule ; we will now find 
how induction brings single facts into a general rule. 
Inductive reasoning is the name which the logicians 
give to all reasoning from experience, from the particu¬ 
lar to the general, from fact to principle. Thus, to 
vary an example used a page or two back: We know 


158 THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 

that the cow chews its cud; the deer does the same; 
and the sheep, the goat, the antelope, the buffalo, in 
all their varieties. Reasoning from these particular 
facts which are known from experience, we conclude 
that it is a general rule that all animals which have 
horns on their foreheads are cud-chewing animals. The 
corner stone of this vast system of inductive reasoning 
is the belief which we all have, that Nature is uniform 
in all her workings — that the same cause will under 
the same circumstances, invariably produce the same 
results. We all believe that, and cannot avoid believ¬ 
ing it. Whether this confidence in Nature’s sameness 
is intuitive, planted in our breasts at birth, or only 
acquired by experience, has already been discussed 
(See Intuition, page 73). Applying this, we put 
together all the facts we know of a certain kind and 
draw therefrom a principle, or, if you please, a general 
fact. For instance, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Smith, and Mr. 
Brown, and Mr. Thompson, all of whom I knew, have 
died. So have Caesar, and Napoleon, and Richard, and 
Alexander, and hundreds of others of whom I have 
heard. I never heard of anybody who lived more than 
nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and of but very few 
who lived more than one hundred years. Hence, I 
conclude: 1. That all men are sure to die at some 
time or other; and 2. That they will probably die 
before reaching the age of one hundred years. All the 
experimental sciences — and pretty much all science is, 
or ought to be, at least, experimental — are principally 
based upon this kind of reasoning. 






INDUCTIVE REASONING. 


*59 


We justly place much reliance upon conclusions 
reached in this way; and yet they are very liable to be 
fallacious. We are likely to reason with an insufficient 
foundation of facts and experience, and thus arrive at 
false results. The incident of the Siamese King and 
the traveler mentioned above, is a case in point. 

Suppose that there was a man who had traveled all 
over Europe and North America, but knew nothing of 
the countries south of the Equator. Somebody tells 
him that there is a land where at noon you must look 
in the north to see the sun. He would probably say, 
“ I have seen a great many countries; in them the sun 
was always in the south at noon. Nature is uniform, 
therefore there is no country which has the sun in 
the north at noon.” The argument is wrong, simply 
because the man’s experience was not broad enough to 
justify his assumptions. 

Mr. Haven puts the case of a native of Central 
Africa who had never seen or heard of any other 
than black men. He might reason in some such 
way as this: I have seen many hundreds of men; 
they were all black; nature is uniform, therefore all 
men are black. This conclusion is, of course, untrue, 
yet the reasoning is sound, so far as the African’s 
knowledge extends. That is the danger we are all 
in — of thinking that we have enough of knowledge 
upon which to build a course of reasoning, when in 
reality we have not. 

But due caution being exercised, there is no other 
system of thought which has done so much good in 


i6o 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


the past, or is calculated to do so much good in the 
future, as this of induction. Before it came into gen¬ 
eral use among learned men, science was a myth. 

Scholars were engaged in searching after the philoso- 

✓ 

pliers stone to convert the baser metals into gold, or 
in predicting the fates of men by means of the planets, 
or, at best, they occupied themselves with fruitless 
quibbles over insignificant points of philosophy. They 
were arguing as to whether matter really existed at 
all, when they might much better have taken its exist¬ 
ence for granted, and tried to find out its properties, 
in order that they might subject it to the uses of 
civilized man. But during the last two centuries, under 
the benign influence of inductive reasoning, Europe 
and America have become one vast laboratory, wherein 
the Watts, Cartwrights, Fultons, Whitneys, Morses, 
Howes and Edisons have labored, experimenting, 
thinking, and finally sending forth inventions which 
have revolutionized the commercial and domestic life 
of the world. Our houses are more convenient; our 
streets are better lighted ; our mails come sooner; five 
hundred miles now are less than fifty miles a few 
years ago; our grain is cut and threshed, and our 
clothes made, by machinery. For all these blessings, 
and hundreds more, we have to thank experiment 
and inductive reasoning. 


REASONING FROM ANALOGY. 


Analogy is a word which has several meanings, one 
of the most common of which is simple likeness or sim- 


REASONING FROM ANALOGY. l6l 

ilarity. Reasoning from analogy is reasoning from 
similarity, or resemblance. It is somewhat like the 
process of induction, but is, in general, less accurate 
and certain. It forms, however, a very valuable adjunct 
in the investigation of any subject. It is often the 
starting-point of those “lucky guesses” which have 
played so important a part in the scientific world. 

Here is an example of reasoning by analogy as 
applied to the science of astronomy. The planet Mars 
is of much the same shape as the planet Earth. Its 
seasons are of about the same proportionate length as 
those of Earth. It apparently has land and water, 
and an atmosphere. In all these respects it is like 
Earth; probably it may be like her in the further 
particular of being inhabited by beings like us. 

If analogical reasoning is often the source of great 
good, it is also often the origin of great evil. Suppose 
that there is in a prison a convict having black hair, 
dark eyes, a Roman nose, long fingers, and thin body. 
Another person possessing the same general features is 
seen, and we say this man is like the convict, in that he 
had black hair, black eyes, Roman nose and thin body; 
probably he is like the convict also in that he will steal. 
This line of argument appears somewhat ridiculous 
when written out in full; and yet, it is precisely the 
process to which we subject every new acquaintance. 
We often determine the reception of a stranger upon 
grounds quite as inadequate as the above. We should 
exercise great caution in the use of these species of 

argument. 

ll 


162 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


Analogical reasoning is generally only probable, but 
it may become almost certain. The rule of probability 
may be roughly stated thus: The more points of 
known resemblance there are, the greater will be the 
probability that there is resemblance in some other 
respect. If the two objects are known to be alike in 
eight particulars and unlike in one, the chances are 
eight to one that they will be found to resemble each 
other in some other point. On the other hand, if there 
is but one point of resemblance to five points of non¬ 
resemblance, the chances are five to one against 
similarity in any given point as yet undecided. 

Cultivation of Reflection. 

Since the thinking power is one of such wonderful, 
untold and unmeasured importance, a person would 
suppose that all men would be anxious to cultivate and 
improve it in themselves; and yet, to use the words 
of Carlyle, “not one in the thousand has the smallest 
turn for thinking; only for passive dreaming and hear- 
saying, and active babbling by rote. Of the eyes that 
men do glare withal, so few can see.” 

While there are, of course, differences in the natural 
abilities of persons in this respect as in all others, it 
is believed that but very few people are put into this 
world without a capability for thought which, if prop¬ 
erly trained, would make them powerful men and 
women. A skillful gardener can make an abundant 


CULTIVATION OF REFLECTION. 163 

livelihood off two or three acres of ground — a better 
living than many a shiftless farmer gets from a hundred 
acres. “A little farm well tilled” is far preferable to 
a large one poorly tilled. A mind of little natural 
strength, if cultivated and pushed to the utmost limits 
of its capacity, is a greater power in the world than 
a mind of much natural force which is allowed to 
run wild without training or direction. The princi¬ 
pal defect in the early steam engines was not that 
enough steam could not be generated, but that about 
three fourths of what was generated was wasted. A 
very small modern engine, utilizing all its steam, would 
evidently do more work than one of the old ones which 
was much larger, but could not apply more than one 
fourth of its steam to the driving of machinery. Let. 
no one be discouraged, then, because Mother Nature 
seems to have been somewhat niggardly in dealing 
with him; let him rather try to overcome all diffi¬ 
culties, and he will come out the stronger for the 
effort. Such difficulties can be overcome, provided 
only that energy be not lacking. I once knew a 
young man who, when a child, had fallen into a 
boiling caldron of some substance which destroyed 
both hands, taking them off just above the fingers, 
and had removed one foot at the instep; yet he was 
a fine writer. He was a teacher of penmanship, and 
an excellent croquet and ball player, holding the pen, 
mallet, or bat, and catching the ball with his wrists 
more skillfully than most persons can do with their 
hands. The same persistent effort that overcame these 



164 THE reflective power. 

obstacles would have been sufficient to counterbalance 
great natural disadvantages. 

HOW TO IMPROVE THE POWER OF THOUGHT. 

Use your faculties of observation. Keep your eyes 
and ears open. Pay close attention to whatever comes 
before you. If you are on a journey, see everything; 
and not only see it, but see it accurately. If you are 
reading a book, do not merely run over the pages in a 
mechanical way, but read carefully, dwelling on every 
sentence until you are sure you know all that it con¬ 
tains, and understand it, for, as a great thinker has 
said, “one does not possess what he does not under¬ 
stand.’’ Associate.as much as you well can with those 
who are wiser than yourself, and gather all the informa¬ 
tion you can from their conversation. Thus you may 
get knowledge, a large store of facts upon which to 
build your reasoning; and thus you may also get some¬ 
thing else of even greater value than the knowledge,— 
right intellectual habits. 

Trace the relationships existing among the facts 
you have learned. Here is something: it must have 
had a cause. Find out what that cause was and in 
what way it must have operated to produce the effect 
before you Follow out the resemblances and differ¬ 
ences between this fact and others. All this is an 
exercise of reason, and this power, like all others, is 
strengthened by exercise. 

Accustom yourself to examine into statements and 
arguments made in your hearing. It is not meant that 



CULTIVATION OF REFLECTION 165 

you shall go so far as to believe nothing without first 
investigating for yourself, but make a practice of scan¬ 
ning things closely, and following lines of argument 
critically, not only the arguments of others, but your 
own as well. When a doctrine or a plan is suggested, 
try to follow it out to the end and picture to yourself 
what would be the result of it if put into practice. 

The examples following will show to what extent 
the thinking power can be trained, even when a person 
has not the advantages of books and learned com¬ 
panions. 

Owing partly to his organization, doubtless, as well 
as to his mode of living, from his childhood up, the 
senses of the Indian are extremely acute. It is related, 
in modern times, that a hunter, belonging to one of the 
western tribes, on his return home to his hut, one day, 
discovered that his venison, which had been hung up to 
dry, had been stolen. After taking observations on the 
spot, he set off in pursuit of the thief, whom he tracked 
through the woods. Having gone a little distance, he 
met some persons of whom he inquired whether they 
had seen a little old white man with a short gun, 
accompanied by a small dog with a short tail. They 
replied in the affirmative; and upon the Indian assuring 
them that the man thus described had stolen his 
venison, they desired to be informed how he was able 
to give such a minute description of a person he had 
never seen. The Indian replied thus: “The thief I 
know is a little man, by his having made a pile of 
stones to stand upon, in order to reach the venison 


166 THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 

from the height I hung it standing on the ground; 
that he is an old man, I know by his short steps, which 
I have traced over the dead leaves in the woods ; that 
he is a white man, I know by his turning out his toes 
when he walks, which an Indian never does. His gun 
I know to be short, by the mark the muzzle made in 
rubbing the bark of the tree where it leaned; that his 
dog is small, I know by his tracks ; and that he has a 
short tail, I discovered by the mark it made in the dust, 
where he was sitting at the time his master was taking 
down the meat.” Another story of the same sort, 

4 - 

which illustrates the wonderful acuteness which a man’s 
powers of observation and reasoning may attain, is the 
following: “A dervis was journeying alone in the 
desert, when two merchants suddenly met him. ‘You 
have lost a camel,’ said he to the merchants. ‘Indeed, 
we have,’ they replied. ‘Was he not blind in his right 
eye, and lame in his left leg?’ said the dervis. ‘He 
was,’ replied the merchants. ‘ Had he lost a front 
tooth?’ said the dervis. ‘He had,’ rejoined the mer¬ 
chants. ‘ And was he not loaded with honey on one 
side, and wheat on the other?’ ‘Most certainly he 
was,’ they replied; ‘and as you have seen him so lately, 
and marked him so particularly, you can, in all prob¬ 
ability, conduct us to him.’ ‘My friends,’ said the 
dervis; ‘ I have never seen your camel, nor even heard 
of him, but from yourselves.’ ‘A pretty story, truly!’ 
said the merchants; ‘but where are the jewels which 
formed a part of his cargo?’ ‘I have neither seen 
your camel nor your jewels,’ repeated the dervis. On 


CULTIVATION OF REFLECTION. 167 

this, they seized his person and forthwith hurried him 
before the Cadi, where, on the strictest search, nothing 
could be found upon him, nor could any evidence what¬ 
ever be adduced to convict him either of falsehood or 
of theft. They were then about to proceed against him 
as a wizard, when the dervis, with great calmness, 
thus addressed the court; ‘ I have been much amused 
with your surprise, and own that there has been some 
ground for your suspicions ; but I have lived long and 
alone, and I can find ample scope for observation, even 
in a desert. I knew that I had crossed the track of 
a camel that had strayed from its owner, because 
I saw no marks of any human footsteps on the same 
route; I knew that the animal was blind in one eye, 
because it had cropped the herbage only on one side 
of its path; and I perceived that it was lame in one 
leg, from the faint impression that particular foot had 
produced upon the sand. I concluded that the animal 
had lost one tooth, because, wherever it had grazed, a 
small tuft of herbage was left uninjured, in the center 
of its bite. As to that which formed the burden of the 
beast, the busy ants informed me that it was corn on 
the one side, and the clustering flies, that it was honey 
on the other.’” 

It is known to almost every one that Sir Isaac 
Newton was led to the discovery of the great laws 
of gravitation, which holds things to the earth and 
keeps earth, moon, stars, and all other parts of the 
universe, in their proper places, by the very simple 
occurrence of an apple falling to the ground. Thou- 


168 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


sands of people had seen that before, but had not 
regarded it as a thing worth noticing. Newton thought 
about it, and the result the world knows. 

The following account of the invention of the power- 
loom is from Knight’s History of England: ‘‘Edmund 
Cartwright, a clergyman, bred at University College, 
Oxford, a poet and critic, was at Matlock in 1784, 
when, in a mixed company in which were some per¬ 
sons from Manchester, the talk was about cotton — 
how the want of hands to weave would operate 
against the spinning mills. Cartwright knew nothing 
of machines or manufacture; he had never even 
seen a weaver at work, but he said that if it came 
to a want of hands, Arkwright* must invent a weav¬ 
ing mill. The Manchester man maintained that such 
a notion was impracticable. Cartwright went home, 
and, turning his thoughts from weaving reading mat¬ 
ter for the magazine, the ‘ Monthly Review,’ labored 
assiduously to produce a loom that would weave cloth, 
without hands to throw the shuttle. His children 
remember him as walking about as if in deep medi¬ 
tation, occasionally throwing his arms from side to 
side, and they were told that their father was think¬ 
ing of the action of the shuttle. Such has been the 
progress of an idea casually impressed upon the active 
mind of a scholar who was previously conscious of 
no aptitude for mechanical pursuits.” The invention 

of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney was made under 

/ 

* Arkwright was a barber by trade, who had lately made some great 
improvements in spinning. 


/ 



CULTIVATION OF REFLECTION. 


169 


similar circumstances. James Watts, whose improve¬ 
ments in the engine completely revolutionized the 
use of steam as a motive power, “solved the prob¬ 
lem upon which he had been long intent ” during a 
solitary walk. 


SOME NOTABLE INVENTORS. 

Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, was 
one of a family of eight children, and was put to work 
by his father at a very early age. For a number of 
years he worked as a mechanic in various establish¬ 
ments, until finally, when he was not yet twenty-five, 
his health broke down, and he was compelled to aban¬ 
don work. By this time he was married and had a 
family of three children dependent upon his exertions 
for bread. About this period the need began to be felt 
of a machine that would make quicker and easier the 
slow, wearisome process of sewing. Howe began to 
reflect upon the problem, and in July, 1845, had so 
far perfected the machine that he was able to make two 
suits of clothes with it He was at that time twenty- 
six years old. The sequel to this story is a sad one. 
Being unable to persuade any one in America to adopt 
the machine, he finally went to England on an engage¬ 
ment at fifteen dollars per week. The exactions of his 
employer being too severe, Howe sent his family back 
to his father in America, while he remained in England 
to seek work. Not finding it, he pawned his machine 
and letters patent for money to pay his fare across the 
ocean, and started home. On landing, he learned that 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


I 70 

his wife was dying of consumption, and as he could not 
walk so far—from New York to Cambridge, Massa¬ 
chusetts— he was compelled to wait for a remittance 
of money from home, where he arrived just in time to 
witness her death. Meanwhile, other men had been 
making sewing machines slightly different from his, and 
he had thus become famous. Help was procured, and 
he instituted suits for infringement of patent, which 
were successful, and a brighter day dawned. He died 
wealthy, after a life of very great hardship, aged forty- 
eight. 

George Stephenson, inventor of the locomotive 
engine, was born in England in 1787. His parents 
were in the poorest circumstances, his father being a 
fireman with wages amounting to three dollars per 
week, and having a wife and six children to support. 
George was put to work as soon as he could do any¬ 
thing, making first five cents a day, then fifty cents a 
week, and at the age of sixteen getting three dollars a 
week, the same as his father. At the age of eighteen, 
he commenced to attend night school, and made good 
progress. Meanwhile, he spent all his spare time 
during the day in studying the engine with which he 
worked, taking it to pieces and learning all he could 
about its parts. As a result of his study, he was 
rapidly promoted from one position to another, and 
won the complete confidence of his employer, Lord 
Ravensworth. He further exercised his skill in 
mechanics by repairing the clocks of the neighborhood. 
I have called Stephenson the inventor of the locomo- 




CULTIVATION OF REFLECTION. IJI 

tive : he was not really the inventor, for it was already 
In existence, but he was the first to make it of practical 
utility. Having told his employer that he thought he 
could make a locomotive which could be profitably 
used instead of horses, he was furnished with money 
and set to work on the problem. In a short time — 
1814, he commenced in 1813 — he completed an engine 
which would draw eight loaded carriages of thirty tons 
each, at the rate of four miles an hour. In 1825 the 
first public railway was opened and Stephenson drove 
an engine on it that drew ninety tons at a little 
more than eight miles an hour. In 1830 he had made 
an engine called the “ Rocket,” which ran thirty miles 
an hour. If my memory serves me well, this “ Rocket” 
was one of the leading curiosities of the great railway 
exposition held in Chicago in the summer of 1883. 
He now established at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a large 
factory for the construction of engines. He died in 
1848, leaving a large fortune, the result of a strong 
combination of industry and intelligence. His son, 
Robert, also won great renown as an engineer, having 
built a number of railroads and celebrated bridges. 

A name which is almost as familiar as Washington’s 
is that of Thomas A. Edison, the great inventor — the 
greatest, probably, that ever lived. But as he is still 
young, and has only become famous within the past 
few* years, comparatively little information concerning 
his life is accessible to the general public. He was born 
in 1847, * n the state of New York, and removed with 
his parents to Michigan when but a small boy. When 





THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


I 72 

he was about eight or nine years of age he commenced 
his career as newsboy, and at the age of twelve he 
obtained exclusive right to sell newspapers on a certain 
division of the Grand Trunk railway. While thus, 
engaged, he procured the necessary outfit of press, 
type, etc., and establishing an office in the corner of 
the car, published “The Grand Trunk Herald,” a vent-= 
ure which was quite successful. Tiring of this, he 
exchanged his printing materials for a chemical appa¬ 
ratus, performing experiments at leisure moments on 
the train. But an accident occurring by which the car 
caught fire, he was compelled to desist from his scien¬ 
tific pursuits. When the war began, 1861, he displayed 
his enterprise by telegraphing the news ahead, and 
having it placed on bulletin boards, thus arousing the 
curiosity of the people and making larger sales of his 
papers. His next step was to become a telegraph 
operator, and he was soon acknowledged to be one of 
the most expert men in the service. He was rapidly 
promoted, going from Port Huron, Michigan, to Indian¬ 
apolis, and thence to Cincinnati, Louisville, Memphis, 
and Boston, successively. During the years that he 
spent as operator, he was constantly experimenting and 
thinking out new devices for the use of telegraphers. 
In 1869, being then only twenty-two years old, he went 
to New York, taking a number of inventions with him. 
Since that time he has given his attention entirely to 
the discovery of appliances for the convenience of 
mankind. Up to 1878, nearly one hundred and fifty 
patents had been issued to him for improvements in 


CULTIVATION OF REFLECTION. I 73 

telegraphic instruments. In addition he has invented 
the telephone, electric light, phonograph, electric pen, 
etc. He is also working at an electric locomotive, and 
it seems probable that at no very distant day, we shall 
be able to seat ourselves in one of Pullman’s elegant 
palace cars, and be whirled off through the country at 
the rate of sixty or eighty miles an hour, without 
smoke, cinders, dust, or jar, and with comparatively 
little danger, a very paradise of travel. Edison lives 
in a beautiful home at Menlo Park, New Jersey (forty 
minutes’ ride from New York city), where he has a 
large laboratory, fully furnished for experiment. Here 
he spends his time in study, working often until very 
late in the night. He is now only thirty-six years of 
age, and with his wonderful energy and genius, his 
great knowledge of electrical phenomena, and his, 
almost unbounded facilities for work, we may reason¬ 
ably hope that he will accomplish in the future yet 
more than he has already achieved. 

Other celebrated inventors are Goodyear, of vul¬ 
canized indian-rubber fame; McCormick, of thp grain- 
reapers ; Morse, of the telegraph; Fulton, of the 
steamboat; Arkwright, of the spinning-jenny; Davy, 
of the safety-lamp; Gutenberg, of the art of print¬ 
ing, and so many others that it would be useless to 
name any more. Among the great philosophical 
thinkers have been Aristotle and Plato, of Greece; 
Descartes, Cousin, Comte, Pascal and Condillac, of 
France; Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Feibnitz and Schelling, 
of Germany; Bacon, Focke, Hamilton, Hobbes, Stew- 


174 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


art, Spencer, Mill and Berkeley, of Great Britain. 
Among the more recent scientists are Darwin, Huxley,, 
Tyndall, Agassiz, Humboldt and Haeckel; all of them 
mighty in the realm of reason. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the chief use 

/ 

of a cultivated reflective power is to make people great 
or noted in the line of science or learning. One of 
the finest examples of the clear, decisive and masterly 
force of a close thinking mind is seen in the life of 
Florence Nightingale. Her fame rests mainly on her 
heroic labors as a nurse when the British army was 
in the direst need of such service, and while it shows 
the supremacy of sympathy, the part played by her 
mental ability is certainly none the less evident, for 
it was the latter that made her success possible. Born 
in 1823, the daughter of William Shore Nightingale, 
of Embly Park, Hampshire, and Leigh Hurst, Derby¬ 
shire, England, her early life was spent as is common 
to one in her position. While yet a child her whole 
being seemed moved by a very warm interest in the 
welfare of others; and the poor, the sick, the dis¬ 
tressed, if found in her fathers neighborhood, were 
sure of aid and kindness from the hands of the 
young English maiden. All the lessons, tasks and 
studies of her early life were interspersed with these 
kindly undertakings and acts of sympathy. She was 
a close, careful, thinking student, and became highly 
educated and brilliantly accomplished. 

When the army in the Crimean war was almost 
overwhelmed with disaster and sickness, and the call 



FLO iEM € E M 1 © H T 0 U © A LE . 











































































































































* 








































































CULTIVATION OF REFLECTION.* I 75 

came to England for especial help to care for the 
sick and wounded soldiers, Miss Nightingale offered 
to go and organize a nursing department. She left 
her comfortable home to brave the dangers and hard¬ 
ships that were terrifying to the stoutest hearts, and 
with a company of chosen assistants was soon brought 
to the scenes of suffering and death. Here the training 
of her thinking powers showed itself. Her ready mind 
was able to grasp the entire situation of things ; the 
needs, the dangers, the resources. Her sharp system¬ 
atic thought mastered each emergency; and, though 
finally prostrated with fever, the result of her extreme 
exertions, she refused to leave her post. Hundreds 
of soldiers lived to bless her labors. 

xAiter her return to England she put her wide and 
valuable experience into well-written books upon the 
various branches of the art of nursing the sick. She 
made lengthy, careful and thorough examinations of 
military reports upon the health of soldiers, and all 
her writings were received with high credit. Of one 
of her productions an excellent English authority says: 
“The facts are brought together in an order, and with 
an incisive force of statement, which render it one 
of the most remarkable public papers ever penned.” 
There are few brighter names in all history than that 
of Florence Nightingale. 

THE USE OF THINKING. 

The importance of a trained ability to think has 
already appeared, but it can scarcely be dwelt upon 




176 THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 

/ 

too much. We are constantly pressed to pass judg¬ 
ment upon questions of importance. Political leaders 
present, with overpowering earnestness, their views and 
the claims of their parties for our belief and our follow¬ 
ing. Are they truthful, wise and just ? Our moral 
teachers, our lecturers, our writers of papers and books, 
are showering doctrines upon us in every conceivable 
shape. Do these teachings harmonize with all the 
known facts interested ? Does any one of them fail 
to be true to itself all the way through ? Does any 
one of them embody doubtful things and call them 
truths, or from plain facts do they come by fair rea¬ 
soning to truthful and just conclusions? Do we 
ourselves know enough, and are our minds well 
enough trained, to judge of any or all of these things 
and pass a safe opinion upon them ? 

And in the daily business of mankind, if it were 
asked what is the most proper mental occupation of 
man, as a man, what would be the answer ? The states¬ 
man is engaged with political affairs; the artisan with 
his own tasks; the inventor with his problems; the stu¬ 
dent with his books; the merchant with trading con¬ 
cerns ; but in what are they all engaged ? What is it 
that each and every one must do ? Evidently, he must 
reason, he must think ; and he who thinks most, thinks 
clearest, is best able to act wisely and forcibly. 

And last, and most important, is the moral or 
spiritual effect of proper habits of thinking. We have 
seen that the mind, through the Presentative powers, 
Intuition, and the five senses, is constantly seeing and 


THE USE OF THINKING. 


I 77 


knowing things. T he Representative powers, memory 
and imagination, are always keeping these things 
before us, and this constitutes a constant stream of 
thought. Shall the current of this stream be 
unguarded ? Shall it flow where it may chance, over 
the nearest declivity, through low muddy fields it may 
be, and stony places? If so, we should remember that, 
in the world around us we must deal with the gross 
things of common sight, touch, taste, the senses, and 
they will shape our thoughts by chance, and at first 
hand ; we shall seldom catch intuitive glimpses of the 
unseen, our spiritual natures will be dwarfed and 
slighted, and our whole lives will tend toward a state 
but little above that of animals; we shall become 
coarse, selfish, low. How vastly much better to turn 
this stream of our thoughts into an even channel, thus 
purifying its current, lending branches to wise uses, 
confining its volume to secure weight and force when 
most needed, and leading it through flowery valleys 
and fair regions. 

Thus may we be able to choose our thoughts, to 
mould, in a measure, the circumstances around us 
instead of allowing circumstances to mould us; and 
herein lies our ability to grow spiritually, to build good 
moral character and habits. “ I believe,” says an Eng¬ 
lish author, “ that the habit of thinking is the great 
demand of the age, and that in this direction must our 
present civilization take its next upward step.” At 
present, what use is generally made of the forces 

needed in youth for building up the man? When, 
12 


i 7 8 


THE REFLECTIVE TOWER. 


as the years of maturity approach, and Nature, like 
a good gardener, prunes off some limbs of the tree 
of being that the budding energies may go to the fruit¬ 
bearing branches, what does man do? He promptly 
cuts off these branches too, and engrafts thereon 
pursuits of wealth, or fame, or fashion, or a sensuous 
phantom which fools call pleasure. He seems to think 
of his higher faculties as the miser thinks of his money; 
if he can only possess them, that is sufficient, and as to 
any further use or improvement of them, to-morrow 
will always be time enough. But simple possession 
is not enough. No good thing that we have is in 
any way really noble, or grand, or good, except by 
virtue of a noble, grand, or good use. As the world 
now goes, how many people are there whose mental 
ability is not just as great at thirty or thirty-five years 
of age as at any time thereafter? The influences that 
should feed the mind are turned elsewhere, or dried up 
altogether, yet the very man who desires no higher aim 
than mere money-making could make more speed by 
hastening slowly enough to carefully improve his own 
reasoning powers. In not doing so he is about as wise 
as the man who, having much traveling to do, prefers 
to run on his way afoot rather than train his idle horse 
to the saddle. A separate chapter will be devoted at 
this point to an examination of natural methods of 
reflection, or in other words, “How to think.” 







OF 





HOW TO THINK. 

HAVE often noticed,” says one 
writer, “the process in my own 
mind, when, in starting out upon 
a journey, I have set myself to 
watch only what I might see, or 
what might happen upon the way; 
not allowing myself to recall past experi¬ 
ences at all. For some time at first I 
can do nothing more than take notice of 
bare facts; as, there is a house, there a 
man, there a tree, such a speech is uttered, 
such an incident happens, etc. But after 
some time a larger machinery begins to 
w r ork; I feel more than a simple perception of objects 
and incidents ; they become surrounded with an atmos¬ 
phere, and shed forth a light. They come in company 
with trains of images, moral likenesses, and a widely 
diffused, lively, and not easily defined kind of senti¬ 
ment. Generally, if one can compel the mind to the 

179 












l8o THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 

task of the first part of the process, interesting results 
will soon follow.” And the writer adds: “A few hours 
passed in this occupation, which presents the world 
like a new vision all around, makes one ashamed of 
so many hundred days spent without observation or 
fruitful thought.” 

It is apparent that, first of all, the mind must have 
things to think about. In the earliest hours of life the 
child begins to use its five senses: it sees, hears, 
touches, smells, tastes. With a never-satisfied curiosity 
it gathers up a wide knowledge of every day experi¬ 
ences. Little by little the young mind learns to put 
the facts of yesterday with the facts of to-day, of last 
month with the facts of last week, and form opinions of 
its own from the combinations. This is thought. In 
the child the direction these thoughts take from hour 
to hour, from day to day, is decided by chance, or the 
child’s instructor. In the man or woman it must be a 
matter of personal choice, or be left to idle circum¬ 
stances. But in the mind, well trained and well gov¬ 
erned, it is the real and truthful relations of things, and 
not their accidental connections, that bring them for¬ 
ward and decide whether they shall remain as objects 
of thought or be speedily dismissed from the mind’s 
attention. 

In the free thinking of children there is little or no 
task-work, and the natural forces of the body expend 
themselves in building up the body and gathering a 
wide range of facts. The world is new to the young, 
and they drink in every new scene with fresh pleasure. 



HOW TO THINK. 


\ 


181 

But as maturity comes on, we lose some of our interest 
in the search for a round of new scenes, the body is 
perfected, and the life forces should now go to the 
serious business of mind-building. As the child had 
first to crawl and then be led along the beaten paths 
before it could boldly go forth alone, we will not 
despise the simpler methods of gaining this ability to 
think, to reason. 

First Method.— At first we must walk in the 
paths already beaten; our minds being led on by the 
minds of others, and we thinking the thoughts of 
others. A man might be aided here by a skillful 
teacher, but I have yet to see a skillful teacher in this 
prime art. The best plan, of which all may avail them¬ 
selves, is that of proper reading; not reading as it is 
usually done, but as shall now be described. For this 
purpose something should be chosen that discusses a 
question, giving reasons one way and another, and at 
last making some decision upon the question argued. 
Very few historical works, biographies, or novels, are 
written in a style to be of much use in this. School 
text-books on the sciences, especially natural philos¬ 
ophy or mathematics, would be much better; and the 
printed arguments of lawyers upon any simple or well 
known case in the courts might also prove good. In 
short, any reading that is frequently suggesting whys 
and wherefores is the kind needed, provided only, that 
at least half of it is readily understood at the first read¬ 
ing. Good newspapers are seldom without an article 

or two in each issue, of this nature, and the sections in 

« 

i 


/ 



182 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


this book on first questions in the Intellect, on the Will, 
on the origin of duty, and many other passages are 
suitable for this use. Now, when ready to read, a 
large share of the whole secret, the concentrated advice 
of many pages, the wisdom of all experience in this 
matter, may be told in two short words: read slowly. 
Read slowly, pausing at the end of every sentence and 
going back and thinking; it over. Do not leave it till 
you fully understand it, know why it was said, and, if 
possible, think of some different way of saying the same 
thing. Put your mind into full harmony with the 
author, try to feel as he felt, and think as he thought. 
You must forget the things around you, and if neces¬ 
sary to do this, find some secluded spot free from 
distracting sounds and intrusions. 

Second Method. — A good device for holding the 
attention when inclined to stray off to other thoughts, 
is to measure each sentence with the breathing; delay 
each breath to complete one sentence, or if the sentence 
be a long one, give one breath to each member of it. 
If you read the sentence more than once, measure it 
each time the same. At the end, recollect yourself for 
the next. There is no reader who has not felt a sort of 
laziness or lack of attention beginning to creep over 
him after reading a short distance — sooner or later — 
in any sermon, or treatise, or history, or anything in 
fact, that requires more attention than a pun in a comic 
almanac, or a mere notice in a newspaper. 

This is so because our attention or force of mind is 
let out and diffused all at once, and consequently is 




HOW TO THINK. 


i8 3 

soon exhausted; whereas it should be taken by turns, by 
pieces, by stroke and recoil. The ancient Egyptians 
chose the serpent as the symbol of mental action 
because every forward movement of the serpent con¬ 
sisted as well in framing itself for another forward 
movement. A better example is that of the main¬ 
spring of a watch, whose force is cut off and expended 
in regular portions by the balance-wheel. In the mind, 
the main-spring is the Will-power which has sent us to 
our studies; and we need a balance-wheel to save that 
force from being too soon expended. Measuring sen¬ 
tences with the breath can very often have this desired 
effect. A person breathless from haste, or eagerness, 
or shivering with the cold, cannot attend closely to any 
question till quieted; for when we are deep in thought 
the breathing is always naturally slow and regular. 
And such is the wonderful inter-sympathy of all parts 
of our nature, that by throwing our bodies into the con¬ 
dition of a thinking person we closely court a flow of 
thought. Another example of this fact is seen in the 
drill that elocutionists sometimes give their pupils. A 
musical scale is written out, with notes so arranged 
as to imitate a person’s voice in hearty laughter. The 
syllables, ha, ha, ha, are placed with the notes, and the 
class is asked to sing them. It seems simple, almost 
silly, at first, but as the sounds come on in the most 
natural and life-like succession, a feeling precisely like 
that which, when we really see something laughable, 
takes possession of the pupil’s mind. Thus the action 
continued, begets the same feeling which, if the feeling 


184 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


came first, would have produced that action. This 
method of leading the untrained mind into fruitful 
thought is therefore a natural and a most excellent one 
when persevered in as it should be. Lord Brougham 
says : “ By dispatching every sentence in its own breath, 
I kept the force of my attention always in reserve, 
saving it by thus giving it out ratably and at intervals 
instead of allowing it to run out loosely and at random, 
thus to lose itself in expansion. As I went on thus, my 
perceptions became clearer, my mastery of the subject 
more powerful, and my interest in it more and more 
animated.” 

Third Method. — After you have read some dis¬ 
tance, and have begun to see the general direction 
toward which the writer seems to be aiming, it is 
an excellent practice, if the nature of the subject 
will allow, to stop and guess what he will have to 
say further, and to what end he will bring his piece. 
After having fully concluded how you would finish 
it were you the author, complete the reading and 
see how far you differed from him. This is not an 
easy task, however, and is one well worthy of think¬ 
ers already skillful. It is well adapted to all classes 

of mechanical laborers whose employments will allow 

/ 

them to think of things other than those with which 
their hands are busy. By far the larger portion of 
the human race have the necessities of labor so con¬ 
stantly upon them that they can have but little time 
for careful reading. But there are many moments 
during each day when the mind can readily and most 


HOW TO THINK. 


185 


happily turn to some subject of previous thought, some 
question not yet decided. Having perused a little, if 
only a few sentences, let the reader, during the hours 
that elapse before further reading is possible, confine 
himself to turning over and over again in his mind 
the things read, thinking of every meaning they might 
have, and guessing upon what will come next. 

Fourth Method. — It is the habit of the good 
student to read a few sentences, and if the whole 
meaning is not entirely clear, to stop, turn away from 
the printed page and think it out. His eyes wear 
a vacant look, while his mind is busy with the mean¬ 
ing of the doubtful passage. This habit of thought 
is one of the most common and useful, and is devel¬ 
oped in the pupils of good schools by such studies 
as mental arithmetic and grammar analysis. These 
studies, in the hand of a skillful teacher, always 
become popular with the scholars, because correct, 
truthful, consistent mental exercise is a genuine 
pleasure; we naturally enjoy it as much as the child 
loves to chase over the play-ground till his cheeks 
tingle with blood, or the industrious farmer enjoys 
his vigorous bodily labors. This habit of reading 
only a sentence or two, or but very short passages, 
and then thinking them over, first imagining your¬ 
self in the place of the author and thinking up to 
the passage and through it with him: and second, 
turning the passage over in the mind after it is 
vinderstood, and thinking all around it, form two of 
the most needful of all the early steps in the art of 



i86 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


reasoning. Elihu Burritt, the learned blacksmith, 
began with a book propped open where he could 
read a sentence or two as he blew his bellows, and 
the other branches of his work compelled him to 
give time for thought upon what he read. No 
doubt Burritt often bewailed the poverty which 
seemed to so greatly delay his progress in learning; 
but had he been a man of wealth or leisure, with 
the same desire for knowledge, he would have been 
in danger of doing as many others unwittingly do: 
to read several chapters at the start, skipping over 
paragraphs not well understood, expecting the next 
page to make all plain. Thus he would shortly have 
lost all track of what the writer wished to say, and 
would also have fully tired himself out before he quit, 
feeling proud of staying so long at his book. A few 
days or weeks of such practice would surely have dis¬ 
gusted the ambitious student, and he would have 
turned his mind to something else with but very 
few new ideas, and no consistent habits of thinking 
whatever. In this particular, his poverty may have 
been a blessing in disguise. Abraham Lincoln, when 
a young man, accepted the position of post-master 
in his rural village, because it gave him the opportu¬ 
nity to read the newspapers often remaining for a 
little time in his care. The mail, whose coming and 
going was so far between, was so small in quantity 
that Mr. Lincoln “kept the office in his hat,” and 
yet it was here that he formed his first taste for 
politics, and laid the foundation for his wise knowL 


HOW TO THINK. 


IS 7 


edge of public affairs. It was again the little reading 
and much thinking, shaped into a habit, that led on 
to great results. Such examples are as numerous as 
the names of successful men. 

Fifth Method.— After some skill in thoughtful 
reading has been acquired, it is a beneficial drill to try 
reading or thinking amid noise and confusion. The 
attempt will be most successful if the scenes and noises 
are familiar, but when you can sit down amid crowds of 
people in strange places and give yourself wholly to 
the solution of some problem, you will have an excel¬ 
lent and a most practical acquirement:. This device 

t 

improves the thinking faculty chiefly through an 
increased power of attention, and should be used as 
a drill only. 

Sixth Method. — A task requiring a still higher 
degree of thinking power is that of analyzing each 
page as you read it. Occasionally a book is found in 
which this is already done by the use of bold-faced 
type, or some such printer’s device, calling the reader’s 
attention to prominent points. But take one not so 
arranged, and at the close of each page note the lead¬ 
ing ideas of that page on a slip of paper. Add the 
number of the page, draw a line, and proceed to the 
next page. For these notes you should understand 
what the writer is aiming to prove, and pick out only 
the salient points, the finished arguments by which 
the author is to arrive at his conclusions ; and your best 
drill will be in stating these points in a few words, 
clearly, so another reader could easily understand them. 



188 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


In a historical or discriptive work, the jottings will 
consist of the important things, persons, or events men¬ 
tioned. When the book or chapter is done, your notes 
should constitute a good running table of contents. 

Seventh Method. — Aside from the direct use of 
reading as a means of developing the reasoning powers, 
one of the best of easy methods is to take some simple 
subject, analyze and diagram it, placing the various 
parts in proper relation to each other. An efficient 
and simple scheme for the diagram is the brace system 
used in this book, which is simplified and explained on 
page 25, where a fair example of what a beginner 
might do, is given. In that analysis it will be seen 
that the tree is examined with reference to the parts 
which go to form it. The direction of inquiry in these 
analyses should be varied ; as, for instance, the tree 
might be examined with reference to the various uses 
of trees. In that case, in place of the words, body, 
roots, branches, something like the following would 
have appeared : First, wood for timbers and fuel; sec¬ 
ond, fruits for food; third, shelter for men, beasts and 
birds; fourth, effect upon rain-fall and climate. This is 
a practical way for the farmer, the mechanic, the work¬ 
ing man in any business or profession, to examine the 
questions that present themselves to be studied and 
acted upon in the line of his regular labors. 

Eighth Method. — To choose some subject and 
think over, or better, write down, all you know about it 
in a simple, clear style and in some regular order, has 
an excellent effect. Care should be taken not to 





HOW TO THINK. 


189 

confuse this work with that of language-study, for 
which this device is often used. Spend no time upon 
a careful choosing of words, but give the entire mind 
to calling up all your knowledge of the subject, sorting 
it over, and arranging it upon a consistent plan. 
Analyzing the subject by diagram, as just explained, 
is a first step to this work. Both this and the last 
method tend to the full development of that branch 
of the Reflective power called classification, as may be 
seen by a re-reading of that section. 

Ninth Method.— An exercise involving all branches 
of the Reflective power, and indeed, the entire Intel¬ 
lect, is one in which you take some statement and then 
go about proving the statement true or false. The 
Presentative power is busily employed in gathering 
facts liable to be connected with the task. Representa¬ 
tion stands ready with these and all other information 
already stored in the mind and the laws of association 
present everything seeming to bear upon the question. 
The Reflective power first classifies, then tries, by 
either or all three of the methods, deduction, induction 
and analogy, to prove the statement. 

Steadiness of attention must be again urged upon 
you ; it. has been said that not one person in a hundred, 
even among the intelligent, can take up a train of 
thought and carry it on connectedly and in regular 
order to a rational conclusion, so little are people 
trained in this direction. One of our great thinkers 
says : “ I meditated when I was young, with a healthy 
body, with a quick sensibility to facts, and with undis- 



THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


I9O 

closed and undeveloped intellectual powers. I medi¬ 
tated— or thought I did; and when I woke I was 
watching the creeping of a fly on the wall. I medi¬ 
tated—or tried to — about heaven, and about the 
wondrous truths which belonged to a future state; and 
when I came to myself I was watching the birds out of 
the window, I meditated; but meditation with me 
consisted mostly in checking myself and bringing 
myself back to the thing in hand.” Yet he persisted 
in calling back his straying thoughts, and manhood 
and age brought the fruit of his efforts. “When I 
was about fifteen years of age,” says one, “ a single 
sentence printed across the margin of a book changed 
my whole habit of life. The sentence was this. 
‘Thought leads man to knowledge’; it was something 
of a mystery to me; I could not see just how or in 
what way thought led man to knowledge ; and I finally 
said to myself, If thinking leads man to knowledge, I 
will just think about this sentence till I get a knowl¬ 
edge of it. At every spare moment I turned my mind 
to the contemplation of this puzzling sentence. After 
the first day or two I must admit that I grew tired of 
it. I was tempted to laugh at myself as pursuing a 
ridiculous notion, and my associates, whose minds were 
wholly taken up with neighborhood incidents and fes¬ 
tivities, did not understand or sympathize with me, but 
I had some ideas of the value of perseverance, and I 
stuck to my task. As I followed the plow, the tall 
grasses of the fallow-field disappeared in the furrow 
under the upturned earth like the shifting scenes in a 







HOW TO THINK. 


1 9 1 

kaleidoscope, all unnoticed ; there were the interrup¬ 
tions of stumps or stones to be well worked around, 
for I earned the name of a good plow-boy; but 
once more upon the straight furrow, my steady horses 
leaned into their collars, and my thought again took up 
the old question. At length I found my study a pleas¬ 
ure and my mind turned to it with delight, although 
the labor seemed quite fruitless. I believe this sen¬ 
tence haunted me for six months, and at last it dawned 

a 

gradually upon me that facts and ideas in the mind 
were not real knowledge, except in the way that a fine 
dinner collected on the table was real nourishment. 
The food must be chewed, and especially must the 
stomach thoroughly digest the food, before it can build 
up the body, and become in the truer sense of the 
word, nourishment. So with facts, ideas and impres¬ 
sions ; the mind must divide them, dissolve them, 
digest them, before they can become real parts and 
parcels of the mind and be worthy the dignified name 
of knowledge. I might at first have accepted this 
statement, ‘ Thought leads man to knowledge,’ as 
being true because it was printed in a book, and have 
stored it in memory as a simple fact. But instead, 
I had now proved it, I had done with it just as it told 
me to do with all such statements; I had digested it, 
and made it a part of my own mind. The sentence 
was true: ‘Thought leads man to knowledge’; I 
understood it, felt it, knew it.” 

Every device that has been mentioned should be 
called into play to chain the attention to steady medi- 


i 


192 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


tation. Making out diagrams on paper, and writing- 
down notes, give the hand employment, and may 
aid the memory in a complex subject to keep con¬ 
nections clear, but it is better to hold all steps of 
the work in the mind if possible. It is a delicate 
task to be sure of the reliability of what we are to 
use as facts, and to guard every step of the reason¬ 
ing. But these are not all. Up from the Sensibili¬ 
ties may come floods of sympathy and desire. The 
statement may be one shadowing something we hold 
dear, and we are very anxious to prove it false. A 
sense of duty may also be involved, rendering the 
question still more complex; and our facts, too, have 
no doubt been gathered in the discoloring light of 
small prejudices. We need not be told that to have 
our final judgment wise, fair, truthful, requires a strong 
and careful reasoning power; nor can we fail to see 
how this faculty reaches into and modifies every act 
of our lives, and why the Intellect has been so often 
styled “the lamp of the mind.” 

In the following example we will study a question 
which calls on us to increase our knowledge of the 
subject thought upon : 

THE QUESTION. 

A number of years ago some workmen digging 
a well near the Bay of Naples came to the top of 
a house deep in the earth. They dug farther in 
various directions, and found that a whole city lay 
buried in ruins under the ground. None of the 


HOW TO THINK. 


T 93 


* 


people living near there knew anything about the* 
existence of such a city. The condition of decay 
the houses were in showed they had lain there hun¬ 
dreds of years. Among the things found, there was 
a barber shop furnished with materials for dressing 
the hair similar to ours of this day. Without know¬ 
ing anything more about this ancient city, or the 
things found there, only that a barber shop was 
found as stated, what might be inferred regarding 
the life, habits -and civilization of the people who 
lived there ? 

THE STUDY. 

In answering this question it should first be ana¬ 
lyzed, if it will admit of being divided in any way. 
We know that the civilization, or general improve¬ 
ment, or progress of any tribe or nation of people, 
shows itself in two ways: first, in the direction of 
shelter and* clothing for the body, and regular sup¬ 
plies of good food; second, in contrivances for mental 
enjoyment, wise laws for government, and moral, 
religious and spiritual elevation. The study of the 
question, then, will be divided into these two sections. 

Section i. Tribes or nations of savages have no 
separate trades or occupations. With them each 
person prepares only such articles as are needed for his 
own use, as his house, his tools, and his clothing, with¬ 
out receiving help from his fellows. Therefore, if 
the old saying, “ Practice makes perfect,” be true, all 
work will be very rudely and imperfectly finished, 
13 


i 9 4 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


because each person is a learner in every different task 
he has to do. The chief food of the savages consists 
of such fruits and vegetables as the earth produces with 
little cultivation, in addition to what is usually obtained 
by hunting and fishing. Their habitations usually are 
mere huts or caves, little better than those formed by 
sagacious animals. The skins of beasts form the chief 
clothing of the savage. The women of such nations 
are almost always treated as slaves, having the most 
severe portion of all necessary labor assigned for their 
performance. It is evident, then, that the people who 
lived in this buried city were not savages. A barber 
shop, with implements for dressing hair, bespeaks a 
state of affairs vastly better than savage life. Further¬ 
more, the principal art learned by all ancient nations 
was the art of war. The war-like tendencies of a peo¬ 
ple must be overcome in some degree, and a peaceful 
disposition pervade the nation before their attention 
will be directed to improvement in anything else. 

Again, a state of peace must always continue some 
length of time, in order that all the sciences may grow; 
as great political disturbances, whenever they exist, 
usually occupy the first place in the minds of the 
people. Distinct and separate trades must have been 
in existence, otherwise there would have been no such 
thing as a barbers shop. Without doubt there were a 
great variety of trades, as that of a barber is one of the 
least necessary. Mines of metals must have already 
been discovered, and their uses determined. Articles 
of iron must have been made by blacksmiths, after the 


HOW TO THINK. 


195 


iron had been made ready by those whose business it 
was to prepare it, and knives and other cutting instru¬ 
ments would require a cutler to make them, after the 
steel had been prepared from iron by still another class 
of persons. If the barber had a permanent shop for 
his use, other more important branches of business must 
have had well-built structures also, and the building of 
many houses would require trained carpenters. To 
heat his curling irons, the barber must have a fire free 
from smoke, which would require a chimney; this would 
require a mason. The mason, to bind together the 
bricks or stone must have mortar of some kind. The 
art of making glass, also, must have been discovered, 
otherwise the shops would have been sometimes too 
much exposed to the weather, or, rather, too dark to 
dress hair with much taste. If glass was much in use, 
diamonds must have been obtained to cut the glass; 
consequently precious stones must have been in use. 
To set the glass in window frames safely, and to 
exclude dampness, something like putty would have 
been needed ; and to make this mixture linseed oil was 
required. This oil is extracted from the seed of flax, 
and it is not likely that flax was cultivated merely for 
its seed ; therefore we may reasonably suppose that it 
passed through all the various changes of collecting the 
lint, spinning it into threads and weaving it into cloth. 
The loom and the implements used in making cloth 
must have required much skill of workmanship in the 
artist, and much genius in the inventor. And if cloth 
were made from flax, is it not very likely that it was 


196 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


also made from various other productions ? As metals 
were known, and men were engaged in so many differ¬ 
ent arts, it is not to be expected that they remained 
without the convenience of coined money. Festivities 
and public amusements of various sorts must have been 
common, and people were very careful of their personal 
appearance; otherwise there would have been no occa¬ 
sion for the barber; as most persons by spending a few 
moments can dispose of their hair very decently. If 
the various mechanical arts had arrived at such a 
degree of perfection, is it not probable that the trade 
of this people with neighboring cities had become quite 
extensive ? If so, as this city was situated on the Bay 
of Naples, ships must have been employed to transport 
articles from place to place. For the management of 
vessels, something of the sciences of navigation and 
astronomy must have been known. The vessels would 
have needed paint to protect them from the weather 
and the water. If paint was in use, as was doubtless 
the case, chemistry must have been understood to some 
degree. 

We may, therefore, conclude that so far as bodily 
safety and welfare, and what we call the comforts of 

v 

life, are concerned, and in the arts and sciences of 
civilized life, these people had made great advance¬ 
ment, and, indeed, compared favorably with life in 
the present century. 

Section 2. For a people to live together in a city, 
a system of laws to govern them was necessary, and 
there must have been some persons in the position 


HOW TO THINK. 


I 9 7 


of law-makers, and others to administer and enforce 
the laws. But even these are fruitless to protect the 
masses of population from vicious persons unless sen¬ 
timents of simple honesty and morality were held by 
the majority of the people, or a heavy body of soldiery 
were maintained to enforce the judgment of the rulers. 
The expense of supporting an army would be a heavy 
tax upon the people, and hence a great drawback. 
But we have no means of deciding how their laws 
were made or enforced. As to whether the people 
had any very sound system of morals and religion 
or not, or whether their greatest aims in life were 
the pursuits of wealth, feasting, idleness and sensu¬ 
ality, or were more wisely given to the pursuit .of 
knowledge, wisdom, and a purer and a higher life, 
the simple existence of a barber shop in their city 
can give us no just clue. 

Some of the conclusions in the above study are, 
perhaps, not well supported by the data furnished ; 
that is left to the reader’s judgment. It is given, 
rather, as a specimen of what any thoughtful person 
would be likely to do at a first attempt. One more 
example will be given : that of a farmer’s young son 
who had for years said that he meant to be a merchant 
or a lawyer some day. He had reached the age when 
it would soon be necessary for him to make some final 
decision. For a period of nearly a year he had thought, 
often very earnestly, about this matter. Below is his 
written study of the question. 


198 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


THE FARMER BOY’S SOLILOQUY. 

What shall I do for life ? I am growing up, and 
cannot expect to stay at home much longer. I must do 
something to support myself, for I must say I have too 
much grit to live off fathers money. He has given 
me a good chance to earn money though, and I will 
soon have enough to give me a fair start in any busi¬ 
ness I want to undertake. It has always been my 
notion, since I was old enough to have a notion, that I 
should like to be either a lawyer or a merchant. I 
scarcely know how I got that idea fixed in my mind, but 
I did get it somehow. I never thought much about it, 
but it always seemed to me that Mr. Troley, down at 
Middleton, had a pretty easy time of it. Compare his 
work with father’s. Father has to get up before day¬ 
light and go out in the rain or snow to feed the horses, 
and cattle, and hogs. He has to work in the mud when 
it is wet, and in the dust when it is dry; when it is hot, 
he has to work in the harvest-field, and when it is cold 
he has to work in the corn-field or timber. In the sum¬ 
mer he is sun-burnt, and in the winter his hands crack 
open almost to the bone. He has to wear dirty, coarse, 
patched clothes, because he can’t afford to spoil good 
ones. Walking on the rough ground and in the mud 
so much makes him stiff and awkward, and the folks in 
town call him a clod-hopper. But this is more of a 
joke than anything else, for they came to see him the 
first one about the new gravel road. His hands are 
hard and stiff, and it takes him nearly a whole day to 


HOW TO THINK. 


I99 


write a letter to grandmother. I heard the teacher 
last winter say he didn’t use good grammar and didn’t 
know very much, and I suppose it must be true, for 

w. 

whenever he sits down to read he goes straight off to 
sleep. Wonder why that is, anyhow? Folks are always 
recommending a life in the country, but I see many dull 
things about it. I saw a piece in a book about hard¬ 
working farmer’s wives, and I guess it is true. Mother, 
I know, works too much. Sister Sue says she will 
never marry a farmer, but I sometimes fear I will pity 
the man that does marry her. She and her friend, 
Belle Browning, were talking about a story they read, 
where the young man gave up his chance of a fine 
fortune for the sake of his sweet-heart and then she had 
her face all marked up with an attack of smallpox, and 
lost her beautiful auburn hair, and was cheated out of 
her inheritance by a rascally uncle, and still the lover 
married her. Sue said they were two downright fools; 
the young man for giving up his fortune, and the girl 
for marrying him when he was poor. I felt like thresh¬ 
ing the man that made up such a story, and was going 
to say so, but I thought I saw a tear on Belle’s face, 
and she said, ‘‘Well, if a real good man actually loved 
me like that I would not risk losing the good qualities 
for the sake of a little money and her eyes flashed 
“like diamonds,” as the books say. 

One week last fall wheat was selling for one dollar 
and fifteen cents a bushel, but father didn’t know it, 
and sold his the next week for one dollar and eight 
cents. He has not got over it yet. He and old Bill 


200 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


Browning are trying between them to own all the land 
in this township, or at least, to each own more than the 
other. Browning has taken the lead just now, though, 
by skinning the Johnson heirs out of their estate, 
which will lay father in the shade, I guess, for I do 
believe when he prays “honesty” on Sunday, he 
means it for all the week. I cannot see that the neigh¬ 
borhood is any happier for their racing. By the way, 
what right have our neighbors to expect us to help 
make them happy? Preacher Wisely shows it very 
plainly that they have, and I can almost feel how it is 
myself. I know he has spent all his life in trying to 
make other folks happy, and he is the happiest man 
himself I ever saw. But old Browning says he will go 
to the poor-house when he gets old and helpless. I do 
not see how so mean a man as Browning could have so 
good a daughter as Belle. Of course, we all want to 
make money, but I have often wondered how much it 
would take to satisfy father and Mr. Browning. I 
always thought a man had a right to make all the 
money he could by honest means, but a piece in the 
newspaper last week says there is a new party to come 
up to keep hoggish people from making more money 
than they really need. There seem to be two sides to 
every question. A quick way to make money is to 
“ speculate,” but all I know about that is, that over in 
Blue Creek neighborhood, on the through-line railroad, 
where they get the daily newspapers every noon, 
Ralph Williams, the hog buyer, made thirty-two thou¬ 
sand dollars in one month, buying grain in the city. 


HOW TO THINK. 


201 


Thirteen of his neighbors then tried the same business, 
and lost all the way from a hundred dollars or so up to 
all they were worth. That was two years ago. Will¬ 
iams quit work, and moved to town, got to drinking, 
and now his wife has run off with another man. 
Besides, everybody is beginning to say that such a 
speculator does not give anything for the money he 
gets, and, therefore, he might just as well play cards 
for his money. 

Sometimes the roads are so bad we can’t get to 
town at all; once last winter father started with a load 
of wheat and got into a big rut and broke his wagon 
and froze his feet. When grandfather was sick, they 
wrote to father to come and see him, if possible. But 
the weather was bad and he didn’t go to town, so that 
when he got the letter grandfather had already been 
dead a week. Now if we had lived in town we would 
have got the letter the same day it came, giving plenty 
of time to get there before he died. Besides, living in 
town we could know everything that was going on, and 
not be as we were when the president was shot, always 
a week or two behind the times. Mr. Troley never has 
any dirty work to do; all he has to do is to measure 
off cloth and sell it. He does not have to go out into 
the storm and cold, but stays in where it is warm. He 
can always wear nice clothes. I never saw him without 
a collar in my life. I saw him writing the other day 
when he was making out father’s bill, and how he did 
make his pen fly. He never has to walk in the mud, 
for there is a sidewalk from his house to his store. He 


i 


202 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


always seems to have plenty of money, too. Mr. 
Smithson, the lawyer, does not seem to have so much 
money as Mr. Troley. But then, he knows so much, 
and everybody looks up to him, and talks about him, 
and goes to him for advice. And all he has to do is to 
read and make speeches. And on the Fourth of July 
he always delivers the oration, and everybody claps 
hands and tells him how smart he is. I should think 
that would be fine. And then they elected him to 
congress last year, and he got a chance to go to Wash¬ 
ington and see all the big men, and be with them. 
They never elect anybody but lawyers to congress. I 
suppose it must be because nobody else knows enough. 

I see there is a great deal to be said about this, 
and when I have written along a piece I have to 
scratch out about half, because it is not what I wanted 
to say. The school teacher has a book about trades 
and occupations that I would like to read. I will 
write down all the short reasons I can think of, both 
ways, the next rainy day. * * * 


Reasons for not being a farmer. 

i Exposure to stormy weather, and heat and cold. 

2. Work begins so early in the morning, and con¬ 
tinues so many hours each day. 

3. Work is often very dirty — in mud and dust, etc. 

4. Are obliged to wear rough, mean looking clothes. 

5. So much rough work makes a person stiff and 
awkward. 

6. Farmers don’t seem to think it worth while to be 



HOW TO THINK. 


203 


good scholars. It makes me feel cheap, not to know 
things. 

7. Lives away from town, post-office, church, etc.; 
never knows when anything happens, and never has 
much company. 


In favor of a life in town. 

1. The merchant works in the house, and is not 
exposed to storms and bad weather. 

2. Can keep clean, wear good clothes, and always 
seems sprightly and cheerful. 

3. Gets all the news, knows everything, and has 
a chance to see everything. 

4. Makes a great deal of money. 

5. Everybody knows the merchants and lawyers, 
and goes to the lawyers for advice; and sometimes 
they are elected to good offices, and their names are 
in the newspapers a great deal. 


Against being a merchant or lawyer. 

1. Has to stay in the house all the time, which must 
be rather tiresome and injurious to health. Store¬ 
keepers, as a rule, are very short lived. 

2. The fact is, they have to spend more hours at 
their business than the farmer does at his. 

3. Merchants have good chances to be dishonest, 
and are frequently tempted to cheat, and people gen¬ 
erally treat them as if they were dishonest, or needed 
very close watching. 


204 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


4. The merchant is obliged to know a great deal, 
or he will be making great mistakes and losing thereby. 

5. Not one merchant in a hundred gets very wealthy, 
while large numbers fail entirely. 

6. Lawyers often have to read, write, talk and make 
speeches, when they do not feel like doing it at all; and 
I imagine that is harder than plowing corn when you 
don’t feel like it. 

7. Young men in any business like law have a hard 
time for a good many years at first to make a living. 

8. Lawyers must have friends in order to get busi¬ 
ness to do, and good people seldom have much lawing 
to do. He has to have friends among law-breakers 
and law-twisters. 

9. He has more chances to make money dishonestly 
than he has honestly, and a good many people think 
that he yields to the temptations. 

10. When a lawyer takes one side of a case, he 
always gets abused by everybody on the other side, 
and if he runs for office, all the bad things he ever did 
are told about him, and a good many lies besides. 

11. Men in these professions have to be away from 
home a great deal, which is unpleasant and unsafe. 

Reasons for my staying on the farm. 

1. I know how to farm, and can go ahead with it 
without the risk of trying to learn a n.ew business. 

2. The farmer is more independent than anybody 
else. He does not have to depend on the friendship 
of others for his business. 


HOW TO THINK. 


205 


3. He is always sure of enough to eat, and he gets 
it fresh and pure, and his work is very healthful. 

4. He has more chances of tolerable success than 
anybody else. A farmer who will work half of his 
time, and be careful, need never “break up.” 

5. The farmer never has to be away from home 
much. 

6. He has all his evenings and the stormy days 
himself for reading, planning and thinking. 

I have copied a lot of these reasons out of books, and 
some of them I do not fully understand; but the more 
I think about it the more I feel certain that the farm¬ 
er’s life can be made the best after all, and that the farm 
is the place for me. I think I can find time on the 
farm to study, read and write; I will take the papers, 
and go to the post-office regularly, so that I will know 
about things as well as anybody. I will have trees, 
flowers and grass about my house instead of cornfields 
and pig-pens; and I will have things cheerful and com¬ 
fortable inside. I can have books and music, and have 
my friends come to visit me. I will not try to get rich 
in the first ten years, nor be foolish enough to want to 

reach a time when I will not work at all. I will not 

» 

work so hard, or eat so much, or be so tired and sleepy; 
thus I will keep my head clear enough not to be 
cheated by sharpers; and I will read, and understand 
things, and learn the ways of the world, and the mys¬ 
teries of life and the great future. 

Such is the effort of a boy to find all the informa- 



206 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


tion he could, and to confine his mind to the task of 
arranging both that information and his own thoughts 
upon a question of life importance to him. Men and 
women of years and wisdom will grapple with questions 
that are as deep to them as that above was to the boy 
of seventeen, and the first attempt at writing down 
their thoughts and reasonings will have much the same 
appearance as his. By more study, the mistakes, 
digressions, and false reasons must be cut out, and the 
whole reduced, by the rules already given, to a system¬ 
atic statement of the whole matter, and thus to a fair 
and just conclusion. 


REMARKS. 

Good health, regular habits and general culture of 
the whole man are most favorable to powerful thought. 
Especially are grossness of food and drink, or the indul¬ 
gence in extreme passion, very hurtful, and any act 
that we feel is wrong, or that cannot be remembered 
with self-satisfaction, disquiets and distracts the mind 
from a steady attention. Continued petty annoyances, 
or extreme excitements, are to be avoided. Brindley, 
the great English engineer, after visiting a theatre, 
could not pursue his studies with success for a whole 
day. 

It seems scarcely necessary to advise the reader 
against too much thinking, but a few points must be 
guarded. The fruit of all healthy thinking is action. 
He who spends his time studying dead questions will 
soon be out of joint with the world, and himself too. 


HOW TO THINK. 20 *] 

The warm blood of human life, love, and sympathy 
must thrill through all his work. So closely is our 
existence wound in with the lives of our fellows, that 
any labor not actuated by an interest in the welfare 
of others can never be blessed with the best fruits. 
This fact will appear more fully in that part of this 
book devoted to the study of sympathy, but it must be 
mentioned here, for the need of a strong sympathy 
is an ever constant, ever present need. Solitary medi¬ 
tation, protracted study, or mental anxiety of any 
kind, is very hurtful without frequent social inter¬ 
course and cheerful exercise. A life of active useful¬ 
ness is the necessity of our nature. 

In the way of an ability to think closely, to think 
for some definite purpose, and make that thought 
tell, we are surprised to find the number of persons 
who have it, so small. Those who have a fair, 
and even an excellent education, either allow busi¬ 
ness, pleasures, company, visits, and many other less 
useful things, to take up their whole time, leaving no 
room for sober thought; or else they iive a wholly 
retired life, and if they have any useful thoughts or 
reach any wise conclusions, never show them in their 
actions. Learning to think is not an easy task. 
Nothing in this world that is really worth doing is very 
easy. But it is the privilege of every one to improve 
himself if he wills. Upon this point a high authority 
has said, “ However low you may stand in the scale of 
intellect, be sure that it depends but upon yourself to 
raise yourself to a high grade of ability, if not to the 


208 


THE REFLECTIVE POWER. 


very highest. Never despair! You may be long in 
darkness, you may feel yourself a while to be incapable 
of original thought, but in this you are no worse off 
than other people. They were all in the same condi¬ 
tion until they had worked out their ability for them¬ 
selves. What I say to one, I say to all. Do but read 
and meditate, and if you only persist, persist , persist in 
the experiment, you will surely rise, and even in spite 
of yourself, become a person of great force and influ¬ 
ence. You will have difficulties, severe difficulties, to 
encounter; but, if you take to your heart the assurance 
that you must vanquish them at last, your toil will be a 
true pleasure, the contest itself an exquisite and 
prolonged delight.” 

Let us recall to our minds, again and again, that this 
power of calling the attention from the things around 
us to ideas in the memory, constitutes the chief power 
of the human intellect; and that the superiority of 
one mind over another is the degree in which this 
gift is granted or cultivated. When Newton was asked 
how he discovered the system of the universe, he 
answered, “ By thinking about it.” This thinking to 
reach an end is the glory of the mind. The power 
of fixing the intellect on an object, and bringing all 
facts within our knowledge that are likely to relate 
to that object and throw light upon it, and also the 
search after new facts with a belief in the existence 
of new facts, though they are yet unknown, proves 
that the human mind is akin to the mind which 
planned the universe. Seeing the reason of one 


HOW TO THINK. 


209 


fact, the human intellect justly guesses the reason 
why other facts should be found. Thus one thought 
awakes ten thousand, and these all move like an 
army in obedience to one will, and to reach our one 
purpose. By urging the mind higher and higher, 
we leave bodily hindrances behind, and in the calm 
region above, to which the spirit climbs, the sky 
appears like that of another world. 

The exercise of this trained ability to think gives 
to man one of the highest pleasures which he is 
capable of feeling. It is a system in the midst of 
variety, and this is one of the chief elements of 
beauty. We may study nature’s laws, and understand 
her wonderful reasons; we may contemplate the course 
of the sun, the stars, the planets; and as the mighty 
plan of them all dawns upon us — grand vision! — we 

think the thoughts of God! 

14 



/ 


Kindred Topics. 


* 


^ HE analysis of the Intellect has just been 
completed; we have examined its four 
powers, subdividing and considering each in 
turn. There are many very interesting 
questions about intellectual action or condi¬ 
tions of intellect, that invite our attention, 
because they promise to throw much'light 
upon the Intellect itself. Two of the most 
common of these peculiar conditions are 
sleep and insanity, with both of which every¬ 
one is familiar. Then the intelligence- of 
animals, as compared with that of man, has 
received the attention of nearly every writer 
1 upon the mind and its functions. Some 
space will be given to these three topics : the intelli¬ 
gence of animals, insanity, and sleep, because they are 
so closely related to the Intellect; and, also, because 
this is really the best way to obtain a general knowl¬ 
edge of man’s mental nature. As has been already 
said, the mind itself cannot be seen with the eye, or 
heard with the ear. We must make its acquaintance 
through a study of its actions and conditions. (The 

reader who is intent upon pursuing the analysis of 

210 
































SLEEP. 


21 I 


mind without delay, can omit this portion and proceed 
at once with Sensibilities, page 251.) 


Sleep is a word which is very familiar to us in its 
practical bearings, but of which it is not easy to give a 
definition that shall at once be scientifically accurate 
and easily understood. Its principal feature is the par¬ 
tial suspension of the connection between mind and 
body. The manifestations of this are well known to 
all. The first nerves to be affected are usually those 
of motion and some of the special senses. The head 
droops upon the shoulders ; the body seeks a position 
in which it can find support, as it is unable to hold 
itself erect; the eyelids close, and the balls become 
sightless. Usually, the last nerves to succumb to sleep 
are those of hearing and touch. A person who is other¬ 
wise completely oblivious to his surroundings, can still 
hear and feel. Even in our soundest sleep, an unusual 
noise, or the touch of a strange body, instantly wakens 
us. There are many interesting examples of the princi¬ 
ple that all our powers do not fall asleep at the same 
instant; some of which form exceptions to the general 
order mentioned above. Reference has been already 
made in the discussion of another topic, to the fact that 
soldiers often march while sleeping, and physicians and 
others who ride much, sleep while riding. I have also 
quoted Sir William Hamilton’s story of a postman who 
often slept while walking across a certain meadow, but 


212 


THE intellect; kindred topics. 


awoke on approaching a somewhat insecure bridge. 
In all these cases the nerves of motion remained active, 
though they are usually the first to feel the influence 
of drowsiness. Mr. Day says that he, “after an 
exhausting journey by night and day, undertook to read 
to others a long document of much value and interest, 
with which he had become familiar during his journey. 
He fell asleep, but continued reading till, after a page 
or two, the hand which held the manuscript dropped 
and awakened him.” Erasmus tells a story similar 
to this, of Oporinus, who was reading a manuscript to 
another, and was discovered to be asleep while reading. 

DREAMING. 

One of the most common and most interesting 
phenomena of sleep is dreaming. There are things 
in connection with it which have puzzled the closest 
examiners, and all that can be done with this subject is 
to present a number of authentic narratives of remark¬ 
able or characteristic dreams, and give such reasons as 
suggest themselves for a few of the circumstances 
noticed in connection with them. The first question 
which arises is whether we are ever without dreams in 
our sleep. It has already been shown — pages 56 to 
59 — that we are not, that the mind is always active, 
even in our soundest sleep. 

DIRECTED BY RECENT EVENTS. 

Dreams are frequently directed in a particular 
course by recent events and thoughts. If we have 




DREAMING. 


213 


been reading of a battle during the day, we are liable to 
dream of participating in one during the night. Many 
timid people dislike to hear of ghosts, wild animals, and 
other frightful objects in the evening, for fear of 
dreaming of them afterward. Recent experiences and 
sensations are sometimes mixed up in the strangest 
ways with those long past, and with each other. A 
woman who was a patient in the clinical ward of the 
infirmary of Edinburgh, under the care of Dr. Duncan, 
talked a great deal in her sleep, and made numerous 
and very distinct allusions to the cases of other sick 
persons. These allusions did not apply to any patients 
who were in the ward at that time; but, after some 
observation, they were found to refer correctly to the 
cases of individuals who were there when this woman 
was a patient in the ward, two years before. 

EFFECT OF BODILY SENSATIONS. 

Dreams are often modified, or, we might say, par¬ 
ticular dreams are caused, by bodily sensations at 
the time. There is a story of a soldier in the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution who dreamed that he was drowning. 
Waking with fright, he discovered that his knapsack 

had slipped forward, throwing his head back and his 

« 

mouth open. It was raining at the time, and the 
tent being leaky, water was dripping into his mouth. 
Hence the dream. Dr. Gregory left a manuscript 
on the subject of dreams, from which we have the 
following: “ Having on one occasion gone to bed 
with a vessel of hot water at his feet, he dreamed of 


214 the intellect; kindred topics. 

walking up the crater of Mount /Etna, and of feeling 
the ground warm under him. He had at an early 
period of his life visited Mount Vesuvius, and actu¬ 
ally felt a strong sensation of warmth in his feet 
when walking up the side of the crater; but it was 
remarkable that the dream was not of Vesuvius, but 
of /Etna, of which he had only read Brydone’s 
description. This was probably from the latter im¬ 
pression having been the more recent. On another 
occasion he dreamed of having spent a winter at 
Hudson’s Bay, and of suffering much distress from 
the intense frost. He found that he had thrown off 
the bed-clothes in his sleep; and a few days before 
he had been reading a very particular account of the 
state of the colonies in that country during the winter. 
Again, when suffering from a toothache, he dreamed 
of undergoing the operation of tooth-drawing, with 
the additional circumstance that the operator drew a 
sound tooth, leaving the aching one in its place. But 
the most striking anecdote in this interesting docu¬ 
ment is one in which similar dreams were produced 
in a gentleman and his wife at the same time, and 
by the same cause. It happened at the period when 
there was an alarm of French invasion, and almost 
every man in Edinburgh was a soldier. All things 
had been arranged in expectation of the landing of 
an enemy, the first notice of which was to be given 
by a gun from the castle, and this was to be followed 
by a chain of signals calculated to alarm the country 
in all directions. Further, there had been recently 


DREAMING. 


215 


in Edinburgh a splendid military spectacle, in which 
five thousand men had been drawn up in Prince’s 
street, fronting the castle. The gentleman to whom 
the dream occurred, and who had been a most zeal¬ 
ous volunteer, was in bed between two and three 
o’clock in the morning, when he dreamed of hearing 
the signal gun. He was immediately at the castle, 
witnessed the proceedings for displaying the signals, 
and saw and heard a great bustle over the town 
from troops and artillery assembling, especially in 
Prince’s street. At this time he was roused by his 
wife, who awoke in a fright in consequence of a 
similar dream, connected with much noise and the 
landing of an enemy, and concluding with the death, 
of a particular friend of her husband’s, who had served 
with him as a volunteer during the late war. The 
origin of this remarkable concurrence was ascertained 
in the morning to be the noise produced in the room ’ 
above by the fall of a pair of tongs, which had been 
left in some awkward position in support of a clothes 
screen.” A military officer once dreamed, after a late 
supper, that the prince of darkness was sitting cross- 
legged on his stomach, holding the Bunker Hill 
monument in his lap. 

GUIDING DREAMER’S THOUGHTS. 

Sometimes persons can be led into a regular 
conversation in their sleep, and some can even be made 
to act in various capacities by speaking to them. One 
writer says he knew a student in college who acquired 


216 the intellect; kindred topics. 

the art of leading his room-mate when asleep to trans¬ 
late his Greek lessons for him after night. The 
following anecdote is obtained from Dr. Gregory’s 
manuscript cited above: “ There was an officer in the 
expedition to Louisburg, in 1758, who had this pecul¬ 
iarity in so remarkable a degree, that his companions in 
the transport were in the constant habit of amusing 
themselves at his expense. They could produce in him 
any kind of dream by whispering into his ear, especially 
if this was done by a friend with whose voice he was 
familiar. At one time they conducted him through 
the whole progress of a quarrel, which ended in a duel; 
and when the parties were supposed to be met, a pistol 
was put into his hand, which he fired, and was 
awakened by the report. On another occasion they 
found him asleep on the top of a locker or bunker in 
the cabin, when they made him believe he had fallen 
overboard, and exhorted him to save himself by swim¬ 
ming. He immediately imitated all the motions of 
swimming. They then told him that a shark was pur¬ 
suing him, and entreated him to dive for his life. He 
instantly did so with such force as to throw himself 
entirely from the locker upon the cabin floor, by which 
he was much bruised, and awakened, of course. After 
the landing of the army at Louisburg, his friends found 
him one day asleep in his tent, and evidently much 
annoyed by the cannonading. They then made him 
believe that he was engaged, when he expressed great 
fear, and showed an evident disposition to run away. 
Against this they remonstrated, but at the same time 


DREAMING. 


217 

increased his fears by imitating the groans of the 
wounded and the dying; and when he asked as he 
often did, who was down, they named his particular 
friends. At last they told him the man next himself in 
the line had fallen, when he instantly sprang from his 
bed, rushed out of the tent, and was roused from his 
danger and his dream together by falling over the tent- 
ropes. A remarkable circumstance in this case was, 
that after these experiments he had no distinct recol¬ 
lections of his dreams, but only a confused feeling of 
oppression or fatigue ; and used to tell his friends that 
he was sure they had been playing some trick upon 
him.” 

APPARENT LENGTH OF DREAMS. 

A remarkable circumstance attending dreams is the 
apparent great length of time lived through in them. 
It has been thought by many that the mind is more 
active then than when we are awake. But that does 
not seem to me to be the true explanation. It is by 
means of communication with the outer world that our 
minds are balanced and set aright. We can, when 
awake, think over the scenes of a battle in a very short 
space of time, but we know how little time has elapsed, 
and we know that we are not engaged in the battle. 
When the senses are asleep, this communication with 
the external world is interrupted, and the mind is left 
to pursue its own wild fancies without anything to 
restrain it and show the falseness of its imaginings. 
Hence, the events we think over seem to be actually 
present, and though we think them as quickly as in our 


2l8 the intellect; kindred topics. 

waking hours, they seem to take up as much time as 
they naturally would in reality. Thus, the battle which 
the mind runs over in a minute, seems to take an hour, 
or perhaps a day. A gentleman dreamed that he had 
enlisted as a soldier, joined his regiment, deserted, was 
apprehended, carried back, tried, condemned to be 
shot, and at last led out for execution. After all the 
usual preparations a gun was fired; he awoke with the 
report, and found that a noise in an adjoining room 
both produced the dream and awakened him. Dr. 
Gregory tells of a gentleman, who, after sleeping in a 
damp place, was for a long time liable to a feeling of 
suffocation whenever he slept in a lying posture; and 
this was always accompanied by a dream of a skeleton 
which grasped him violently by the throat. He could 
sleep in a sitting posture without any uneasy feeling; 
and after trying various expedients he at last had a 
sentinel placed beside him, with orders to awake him 
whenever he sunk down. On one occasion he was 
attacked by the skeleton, and a severe and long strug¬ 
gle ensued before he'awoke. On finding fault with his 
attendant for allowing him to lie so long in such a state 
of suffering, he was assured that he had not lain an 
instant, but had been awakened the moment he began 
to sink. Another gentleman dreamed that he crossed 
the Atlantic, stayed a fortnight, and was returning 
when he fell into the sea. This awakened him, and he 
found he had not slept more than ten minutes. De 
Ouincey said that he often seemed to live through 
many years in a single night. 


DREAMING. 


219 


\ 


TASKS ACCOMPLISHED. 

Many curious cases are on record of considerable 
mental achievements made during sleep. Franklin 
used frequently, on waking in the morning, to find 
political questions which had been troubling him the 
day before clearly resolved in his mind. A mathema¬ 
tician after having labored in vain' upon a problem for 
a long time, found the solution on his table one morn¬ 
ing. He had risen during his sleep and solved the 
problem upon a piece of paper, but was totally unable 
to remember the act, and only the evidence of his eyes 
could convince him of the work he had done during- 
the night. Coleridge dreamed out his beautiful poem, 
“ Kubla Khan,” while asleep in a chair. He gives the 
following account of it. In consequence of a slight 
indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed for the 
author, from the effect of which he fell asleep in his 
chair at the moment he was reading the following sen¬ 
tence, or words of the same substance, in “ Purchas’s 
Pilgrimage”: “ Here the Khan Kubla commanded a 
palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto ; and 
thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a 
wall.” The author continued for about three hours in a 
profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during 
which time he has the most vivid confidence that he 
could not have composed less than from two to three 
hundred lines ; if that indeed can be called composition 
in which all the images rose up before him as things, 
with a parallel production of the correspondent expres* 


220 


THE intellect; kindred topics. 


sions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort.. 
On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct 
recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink and 
paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines, that 
are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortu¬ 
nately called out and detained above an hour, and on 
his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise 
and mortification, that though he still retained some 
vague and dim recollection of the general purport of 
the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten 
scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away 
like the images on the surface of a stream into which a 
stone had been cast, but, alas! without the after resto¬ 
ration of the images. Dr. Carpenter speaks of an 
occurence which shows that the mind is capable of 
intense activity in sleep, and also that it may perform 
protracted and difficult labors, without being able to 
recollect them on waking. A man was called upon to 
prepare a discourse for public delivery at a certain 
occasion. By the evening before the day of the 
appointment, he had succeeded in writing a speech, but 
was utterly disgusted with it. During the sleep that 
followed, he dreamed of a new way of treating the sub- - 
ject, and when he awoke he went to his desk to write 
out his new ideas. Judge of his astonishment on find¬ 
ing that he had already performed that operation, the 
ink being yet scarcely dry. The following anecdote 
has been preserved in a family of rank in Scotland, the 
descendants of a distinguished lawyer of the last age : 
“This eminent person had been consulted respecting 


DREAMING. 


221 


a case of great importance and much difficulty; and he 
had been studying it with intense anxiety and attention. 
After several days had been occupied in this manner, 
he was observed by his wife to rise from his bed in the 
night and go to a writing-desk which stood in the bed¬ 
room. He then sat down and wrote a long paper which 
he put carefully by in his desk, and returned to bed. 
The following morning he told his wife that he had a 
most interesting dream ;—that he had dreamed of deliv¬ 
ering a clear and luminous opinion respecting a case 
which had exceedingly perplexed him; and that he 
would give anything to recover the train of thought 
which had passed before him in his dream. She then 
directed him to the writing-desk, where he found the 
opinion clearly and fully written out, and which was 
afterward found to be perfectly correct.” 

ARE DREAMS PROPHETIC? 

One of the most frequent queries regarding dreams 
is as to whether they are prophetic ; or, as we often 
hear the question asked, “ Do they come true?” With¬ 
out attempting any explanation of them, for I do not 
believe anybody understands the subject as yet, I shall 
content myself by mentioning a few of the many cases 
in which remarkable forewarning of future events 
seems to have been given in dreams. 

Cicero tells of two Arcadians who went to Mezara 
and engaged separate lodgings. One of them appeared 
twice to the other in dreams ; the first time imploring 
help, and the second time murdered, and informing the 



222 THE INTELLECT; KINDRED TOPICS 

dreamer that his body would be conveyed out of the 
city early in the morning, through a certain gate, in a 
covered wagon. Impressed by the dream, he went at 
the designated time to the gate mentioned, found the 
body in the wagon as described, arrested the murderer, 
and handed him over to the officers. The following is 
originally from the “London Times”: “A Mr. Will¬ 
iams, residing in Cornwall, dreamed twice in the same 
night that he saw the Chancellor of England killed, in 
the vestibule of the house of commons. The dream so 
impressed him that he related it to several of his 
acquaintances. It was subsequently ascertained that 
on the evening of that day the chancellor, Mr. Perceval, 
was assassinated according to the dream.” A lady 
dreamed that an aged female relative had been mur¬ 
dered by a black servant, and the dream occurred more 
than once. She was then so impressed by it that she 
went to the house of the lady to whom it related, and 
prevailed upon a gentleman to watch in an adjoining 
room during the following night. About three o’clock 
in the morning, the gentleman hearing footsteps on the 
stairs, left his place of concealment, and met the ser¬ 
vant carrying up a quantity of coals. Being questioned 
as to where he was going, he replied, in a confused and 
hurried manner, that he was going to mend his mis¬ 
tress’fire— which, at three'o’clock in the morning in 
the middle of summer, was evidently impossible ; and 
on further investigation a strong knife was found 
concealed beneath the coals. The people interested 
believed that a murder had thus been prevented. 



ARE DREAMS PROPHETIC? 


223 


Another lady dreamed that a boy, her nephew, had 
been drowned along with some young companions 
with whom he had engaged to go on a sailing excur¬ 
sion. She sent for him in the morning, and with much 
difficulty prevailed upon him to give up his engage¬ 
ment ; his companions went, and were all drowned. 
Haven gives a case told by Dr. Moore: “A friend 
of his dreamed that he was amusing himself, as he 
was in the habit of doing, by reading the epitaphs 
in a country church-yard, when a newly-made grave 
attracted his attention. He was surprised to find on 
the stone the name, and date of death, of an inti¬ 
mate friend of his, with whom he had passed that 
very evening in conversation. Nothing more was 
thought of the dream, however, nor, perhaps, would 
it ever have recurred to mind, had he not received 
intelligence some months afterward, of the death of 
this friend, which took place at the very date he had 
in his dream seen recorded on the tombstone.” 

Two ladies, sisters, had been for several days in 
attendance upon their brother, who was ill of a com¬ 
mon sore throat, severe and protracted, but not con¬ 
sidered as attended with danger. At the same time, 
one of them had borrowed a watch from a female 
friend in consequence of her own being under repair; 
this watch was one to which particular value was 
attached on account of some family associations, and 
some anxiety was expressed that it might not meet 
with any injury. The sisters were sleeping together 
in a room communicating with that of their brother, 


224 the intellect; kindred topics.. 

when the elder of them awoke in a state of great 
agitation, and having roused the other, told her that 
she had had a frightful dream. “ I dreamed,” said she, 
“that Mary’s watch had stopped; and that, when I 
told you of the circumstance, you replied, ‘ Much worse 

than that has happened, for-’s breath has stopped 

also,’ ” naming their brother who was ill. To quiet her 
agitation, the younger sister immediately got up and 
found the brother sleeping quietly, and the watch, 
which had been carefully put in a drawer, going cor¬ 
rectly. The following night the very same dream 
occurred, followed by similar agitation, which was 
again composed in the same manner — the brother 
being again found in a quiet sleep, and the watch 
going well. On the following morning, soon after 
the family had breakfasted, one of the sisters was 
sitting by her brother, while the other was writing 
a note in the adjoining room. When her note was 
ready for being sealed, and she was proceeding to take 
out for this purpose the watch alluded to, which had 
been put by in her writing desk, she was astonished 
to find it had stopped. At the same instant she 
heard a scream of intense distress from her sister in 
the other room — their brother, who had been still 
considered as going on favorably had been seized 
with a sudden fit of suffocation, and had just breathed 
his last. A man dreamed that the vessel in which 
his brother was an officer, and, in part, owner of the 
cargo, was wrecked on a certain island and the cargo 
lost, but the hands saved. He was so impressed that 




ARE DREAMS PROPHETIC ? 


225 


he went directly and procured an extra insurance of 
five thousand dollars on his brother’s portion of the 
property. By the next arrival, news came that the 
vessel was wrecked at the time and place of which 
the man had dreamed, and the mariners saved. 

SOMNAMBULISM. 

Very much like dreaming is the singular phenom¬ 
enon of somnambulism, or sleep-walking. Possibly the 
latter is only a heightening of the former. In the 
ordinary dream, the person’s mind is active, but his 
body is at rest; in somnambulism, both body and mind 
act. The principal features of somnambulism, are the 
following: The subject, while in a state of sound 
sleep, and perfectly unconscious of what he does, 
rises, walks about, finds his way over dangerous, and, 
at other times, inaccessible places, speaks and acts as if 
awake; performs in the dark, and with the eyes closed, 
or even bandaged, operations which require the closest 
attention and the best vision ; perceives, indeed, things 
not visible to the eye in its ordinary waking state, 
perhaps even things absent and future, and when 
awakened from this state, is perfectly unconscious of 
what has happened, and astonished to find himself in 
some strange and unusual position. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

There lived in Bordeaux a young minister who was 
a somnambulist. The case was carefully watched by a 

student there who afterward became Archbishop of 
15 


226 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

Bordeaux, and who went into the young man’s room 
every night. He would rise, take paper, pen, and ink, 
and proceed to the composition of sermons. Having 
written a page in a clear, legible hand, he would read 
it aloud from top to bottom, with a clear voice and 
proper emphasis. If a passage did not please him, he 
would erase it, and write the correction plainly, in its 
proper place, over the erased line or word. All this 
was done without any assistance from the eye, which 
was evidently asleep ; a piece of pasteboard interposed 
between the eye and paper producing no interruption 
or inconvenience. When his paper was exchanged for 
another of the same size, he was not aware of the 
change, but when a paper of different size was substi¬ 
tuted, he at once detected the difference. Very many 
such cases are recorded of persons who have written, 
and performed various other operations requiring ordi¬ 
narily, the exercise of the sense of sight, with the eyes 
shut, bandaged, or otherwise rendered useless. 

A gentleman found that his hen-roost was visited 
every night by thieves of some kind, threatening the 
speedy extermination of his flock. What surprised him 
most, was the fact that his watch-dog, a large and 
trusty animal, failed to give an alarm. Finally he 
ordered his servants to watch the roost. They did so, 
detected the culprit, and after a violent struggle, cap¬ 
tured him. Judge of his surprise on finding out that he 
himself was the depredator, and that during his sleep 
he had been stealing his own chickens. One of the 
most remarkable instances of which I have ever heard, 


SOMNAMBULISM. 


227 


is the following 1 of a contest in painting by the young 
ladies of a certain seminary. Among the competitors 
was a young and timid girl who was conscious of her 
inferiority in the art, yet strongly desirous of success. 
For a time she was quite dissatisfied with the progress 
of her work, but by and by began to notice, as she 
resumed her pencil in the morning, that something had 
been added to the work since she last touched it. This 
was noticed for some time, and quite excited her curi¬ 
osity. The additions were evidently by a superior 
hand, far excelling her own in skill and workmanship. 
Her companions denied, each and severally, all knowl¬ 
edge of the matter. She placed articles of furniture 
against her door in such a way that any one entering 
would be sure to awaken her. They were undisturbed, 
but still the mysterious additions continued to be made. 
At last, her companions concluded to watch without, 
and make sure that no one entered her apartment 
during the night, but still the work went on. At length 
it occurred to them to watch her movements, and now 
the mystery was explained. They saw her, evidently in 
sound sleep, rise, dress, take her place at the table, and 
commence her work. It was her own hand that uncon¬ 
sciously to herself, had executed the work in a style 
which, in her waking moments, she could not approach, 
and which quite surpassed all competition. The pict¬ 
ure, notwithstanding her protestations that it was not 
her painting, took the prize. A young gentleman men¬ 
tioned by Horatius, living in the citadel of Breslau, was 
observed by his brother, who occupied the same room, 


228 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

to rise in his sleep, wrap himself in a cloak, and escape 
by a window to the roof of the building. He there tore 
in pieces a magpie’s nest, wrapped the young birds 
in his cloak, returned to his apartment, and went 
to bed. In the morning he mentioned the circum- 
stances as having occurred in a dream, and could not 
be pursuaded that there had been anything more than 
a dream, till he was shown the magpies in his cloak. 

In Massachusetts, some years since, a girl of four¬ 
teen years of age, of a nervous temperament, but with¬ 
out any extraordinary intelligence, after having fallen 
asleep in the daytime, would rise from her chair and 
deliver a sermon, which she preceded by the usual 
religious services, as if to a large audience. These 
discourses, which far exceeded in mental power her 
waking ability, she would deliver day after day, or on 
alternate days, without repetition, however, of thought 
or language. 

The reason why a person can walk when asleep, on 
places where he would not venture when awake, is 
probably that while his eyes are closed he governs his 
movements by the sense of touch alone. A man can 
walk without difficulty on the narrow space of a rail¬ 
road iron. If he were unconscious of danger the same 
space would suffice just as well for him to walk seventy- 
five feet above the ground. The somnambulist, being 
unable to see, is not conscious of any danger, and 
climbs the same ledges at a great height, that we could 
all climb if they were close to the ground. 

As to the performance of operations, without the 


SOMNAMBULISM. 


229 


use of the eyes, which would seem necessarily to 
involve the exercise of sight, there is, I believe, no 
universally accepted explanation. It is ascribed by 
some, however, to a “general sense”—feeling — which 
includes all of the special senses, and which is height¬ 
ened when any of these are absent. 


Insanity. 

Slightly related to dreams and somnambulism, is 
Insanity. The primary characteristic of insanity in all 
its various forms, is the loss of power to control the 
workings of the mind, and to correct its extravagant 
mistakes by comparison with the external world. The 
ideas that take possession of the mind seem to be real¬ 
ities, and the evidence of his senses is not strong 
enough to convince the patient that they are not real, 
but are only wild whims of imagination. His diseased 
fancy converts his narrow cell into a magnificent throne 
hall; and he, poor maniac, shivering upon his bed of 
straw, is the king, wielding his scepter over a broad 
and powerful land. 

CHARACTERISTICS. 

In the severest cases, one idea generally takes 
possession of the sufferer’s mind, and drives everything 
else out. He may fancy himself a king, or an inspired 
agent of the deity, or even God himself; or he may 
think that he is financially ruined, or that on the con¬ 
trary, he has made a lucky speculation, and become 



23O THE INTELLECT ; KINDRED TOPICS. 

enormously rich; in fact, there is' no limit to the 
number of absurd fancies conjured up by the insane. 
Their phantoms are as various as the minds of men. 
But, whatever the nature of the delusion, it is complete, 
and obtains entire control of the maniac’s mind. He 
acts always in the capacity of the person he claims to 
be, and cannot in any way be persuaded out of his 
belief. 

Sometimes insanity disappears suddenly, and the 
person steps back into his old life, unconscious of the 
lapse of years, that have been clouded for him. The 
following case was originally told in the “ American 
Journal of Science.” A man had been employed for a 
day with a beetle, or maul, and wedges, in splitting 
pieces of wood for erecting a fence. At night, before 
going home, he put the beetle and wedges into the 
hollow of an old tree, and directed his sons, who had 
been at work in an adjoining field, to accompany him 
next morning to assist in making the fence. In the 
night he became maniacal and continued in a state of 
insanity for several years, during which time his mind 
was not occupied with any of the subjects with which 
he had been conversant when in health. After several 
years his reason returned suddenly, and the first ques¬ 
tion he asked was, whether his sons had brought home 
the beetle and wedges. They, being afraid of entering 
upon any explanation, only said that they could not 
find them ; on which, he arose from his bed, went to 
the field where he had been at work so many years 
before, and found, where he had left them, the wedges 



/ 


CHARACTERISTICS OF INSANITY. 231 

\ 

and the iron rings of the beetle, the wooden part being 
entirely mouldered away. 

ACTIVITY OF MIND IN INSANITY. 

Insane persons are sometimes possessed of an activ¬ 
ity and vigor of mind which did not belong to them 
in health. Pinel says he has often stopped at the 
chamber door of a literary gentleman, who, during his 
paroxysms, appears to soar above the mediocrity of 
intellect that was familiar to him, solely to admire his 
newly acquired powers of eloquence. He declaimed 
upon the subject of the Revolution with all the force, 
the dignity, and' purity of language that this very 
interesting subject would allow. At other times he 
was a man of very ordinary abilities. 

MONOMANIACS. 

A peculiar and interesting class of the insane is 

% 

made up of those who are insane in one thing and in 
all others are apparently sound. You would not dis¬ 
cover their insanity in talking with them, unless the 
particular topic of their delusion happened to be 
touched upon. A man, mentioned by Pinel, who had 
been for some time confined in the Bicetre, was on the 
visitation of a commissary, ordered to be dischared as 
perfectly sane, after a long conversation in which he 
had conducted himself with the greatest propriety. 
The officer prepared the paper for his discharge, and 
gave it him to put his name to it, when he subscribed 


232 THE intellect; kindred Tones. 

himself Jesus Christ, and then indulged in all the 
reveries connected with that delusion. 

Lord Erskine gives a very remarkable history of a 
man who indicted Dr. Munro for confining him, with¬ 
out cause, in a madhouse. He underwent a most rigid 
examination by the counsel of the defendant without 
discovering any appearance of insanity, until a gentle¬ 
man came into court who desired a question to be put 
to him respecting a princess with whom he had corre¬ 
sponded in cherry juice. Instead of replying “I never 
did such a thing,” he immediately talked about the 
princess in the most insane manner, and the cause was 
at an end. But this Laving taken place in Westmin¬ 
ster, he commenced another suit in the city of London, 
and on this occasion no effort could induce him to 
expose his insanity; so that the cause was dismissed 
only by bringing against him the evidence taken at 
Westminster. 

It can scarcely be believed that the plan of confining 
many hundred insane people in a vast cheerless build¬ 
ing known as an asylum, is the right one. Here the 
gentle melancholic and the convalescent are brought 
into contact with the raving maniac. It is almost 
enough to unbalance a sound mind, and its effects on 
those already diseased cannot but be injurious in the 
extreme. A musician confined in an asylum, as one of 
the first symptoms of returning reason, made some 
slight allusions to his favorite instrument. It was 
immediately procured for him; he occupied himself 
with music for several hours every day, and his conva- 


MONOMANIACS. 


233 




lescence seemed to be advancing rapidly. But he was 
then unfortunately allowed to come frequently into 
contact with a furious maniac, by meeting him in the 
gardens. The musician’s mind was unhinged; his 
violin was destroyed; and he fell back into a state of 
insanity which was considered as confirmed and hope¬ 
less. Some of the states are happily beginning to 
appreciate this fact, and are trying the experiment of 
building smaller asylums and more of them. The 
results must surely prove satisfactory. 

With regard to the care of the insane, they should 
be removed from the associations of their lunacy, and so 
far as possible, their minds should be drawn away from 
the subject of their delusion, by giving them something 
else to think about. A farmer in the northern part of 
Scotland became quite celebrated for his successful 
treatment of the insane. The principal part of his 
method was to keep them constantly employed in 
severe bodily toil which, to a degree, at least, with¬ 
drew their attention from the subject upon which they 
were insane, and thus gradually cultivated a new train 
of thought in their minds. 


Intelligence of Animals. 

Ever since the time of Aristotle, and, perhaps, from 
a date earlier yet than that, a discussion has been 
going on in the learned world about the kind and 
degree of animal intelligence. It is a question which 
possesses a great deal of interest, striking, as it does.. 


234 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

within the bounds of three of the “ologies”— psy¬ 
chology, zoology, and theology. From the time of 
Aristotle to that of Descartes the prevalent opinion 
was that animals were endowed with faculties like our 
own, except that they were not so highly developed. 
Descartes originated a theory that the brutes were 
not possessed of mind at all, but that their actions 
were merely like the motions of a machine; that the 
bird built its nest for much the same reason that the 
hand of a clock pointed to the hour upon the dial 
plate — because it was so constructed that it could 
not avoid it. Since Descartes, the philosophers have 
been gradually going back to the old opinion. At 
the present time they are, perhaps, pretty nearly. 
equally divided into two classes: those who hold that 
brute intelligence is of the same kind as human intel¬ 
ligence, and those who hold that it is different, the 
brute having only instinct. Many of the latest and 
most thorough observations of the lives and habits 
of animals prove to us that they have a higher grade 
of intelligence than we are usually in the habit of 
giving them credit for. To say that man acts only 
through reason, and brutes only through instinct, is 
not fair to either; it does not, at any rate, do justice 
to man. In order to arrive at the true place that 
animals occupy in the scale of creation, let us examine 
the whole scheme of life in the world. 

First, there are the little grains of matter, minute 
atoms, that make up the entire earth, the water, the 
air, the stones, the clods of the field. These move 



INTELLIGENCE OF ANIMALS. 235 

about upon themselves according to only a few simple 
rules, and pass through various changes. We are not 
in the habit of saying that the clods of the field- have 
life, however. But the giver of all forces adds another 
force to those already acting on the elements of the 
earth, and at once we begin to have plants — we have 
plant-life. Plants combine in their existence all the 
elements and forces that operate on matter below them, 
and also another force, added to call them into life. No 
one, however, credits plants with having thoughts or 
knowledge. But having the elements of the earth and 
the rules that govern them, and having plant-life and 
the additional rules that govern it, the world is ready 
for a higher form of life. Straightway a new force is 
.added, this force we call intelligence, and we have 
animals. For the animal to live, it uses all there is in 
Nature below it. Its body is made up of the elements 
of the earth, most of which it gets at second hand, from 
plants ; it is subject to all of Nature’s laws, but has the 
higher gift of being able to see and in a measure to 
know things. The more intelligent of animals even 
reason to the extent of combining things already in 
their reach to produce results which they desire : as the 
elephant blew against the wall that the force of its 
breath might raise the small piece of money and roll 
It out from the wall so the elephant might pick it up ; 
but here the mental power of animals ceases. 

Above animals in the scale, comes man, with his 
higher forms of intelligence added unto that of animals. 
He not only combines, but he analyzes, takes a thing 



236 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

to pieces and studies its parts as related to each other, 
and proves in many ways his superiority over animals, 
and his fitness to have dominion over all the earth. 
But in man’s life appears all there is below him in 
nature. Every force that has appeared comes into 
play, and a higher force is added to rule them all. 
In the mental actions of men, therefore, are some 
things that rank with the mentality of animals. Many 
of the common acts of life, everything in the way of 
taking food and continuing life, are closely akin to 
instinct, and are not superior to the intelligence of 
animals. Man’s greater ability appears at each step, 
of course, but the really higher forces in his nature 
show themselves in other particulars. He stands upon 
the summit of all earthly things; his existence has 
the broadest range. No other creature can sink so 
low, or rise so high. He is the finishing stroke, the 
connecting link between creation and Creator. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 

Some years ago there was a dog in London whose 
habit it was to attend every fire in the city to which 
the fire department was called out. He kept this up 
for many years, never being known to miss. Another 
fire dog would climb the fire escapes and, crouching 
close to the floor, below the clouds of smoke, search 
the rooms of the burning house, and if a person was. 
found helpless from suffocation, would set up a howl 
which would bring the firemen to the rescue. 

A gentleman in Suffolk, on an excursion with his 


ILLUSTRATIONS OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 237 

friend, was attended by a Newfoundland dog, which 
soon became the subject of consideration. The 
master, after a warm eulogium upon the perfection of 
his canine favorite, assured his companion that he 
would, upon receiving the order, return and fetch any 
article he should leave behind, from any distance. To 
confirm this assertion, a marked shilling was put under 
a large square stone, by the side of the road, being 
first shown to the dog. The gentlemen then rode for 
three miles, when the dog received a signal from his 
master to return for the shilling he had seen put under 
the stone. The dog turned back ; the gentlemen rode 
on and reached home, but to their surprise and dis¬ 
appointment, the hitherto faithful messenger did not 
return during the day. It afterward appeared that he 
had gone to the place where the shilling was deposited, 
but the stone being too large for his strength to 
remove, he had stayed howling at the place, till two 
horsemen riding by, attracted by his seeming distress, 
stopped to look at him, when one of them alighting, 
removed the stone, and seeing the shilling, put it into 
his pocket, not at the time conceiving it to be the 
object of the dog’s search. The dog followed their 
horses for several miles, remained undisturbed in the 
room where they snipped, followed the chambermaid 
into the bedchamber, and secreted himself under one 
of the beds. The possessor of the shilling hung his 
trousers upon a nail by the bedside ; but when the 
travelers were both asleep, the dog took the trousers in 
his mouth, and leaping out of the window, which was 


238 the intellect; kindred topics. 

I 

left open on account of the sultry heat, reached the 
house of his master at four o’clock in the morning, with 
the prize he had made free with, in the pocket of which 
was found a watch and money, that were returned 
on being advertised, when the whole mystery was 
mutually unraveled, to the admiration of all the 
parties. 

Mr. Youatt tells the following anecdote, vouching 
for its truth : A young man, an acquaintance of the 
coachman, was walking, as he had often done, in Lord 
Fife’s stables at Bauff. Taking an opportunity when 
the servants were not regarding him, he put a bridle 
into his pocket. A highland cur that was generally 
about the stable saw him, and immediately began to 
bark ; and when he got to the stable door, it caught 
him by the leg, in order to prevent his passage. As 
the servants had never seen the dog act thus before, 
and the same young man had been often with them, 
they could not imagine what had been the reason of 
the dog’s conduct. However, when they saw the end 
of a valuable bridle peeping out of the young man’s 
pocket, they were able to account for it; and on his 
giving it up, the dog left the stable door, where he had 
stood, and allowed the boy to pass. 

A dog owned by a merchant in the neighborhood 
of Vera Cruz, received a wound in the ear. His 
master immediately carried him to a chemist, who 
applied a remedy, bandaging it afterward. For three 
days the operation was repeated, but the fourth, the 
dog seeing that his master delayed more than usual in 


ILLUSTRATIONS OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 239 

coming to take him, went alone to the apothecary, 
leaped upon the counter and remained there until the 
necessary operation was performed; and without wait¬ 
ing more for his master to take him, continued repeat¬ 
ing his visits to the apothecary until he was entirely 
cured. 

The perfection which shepherd dogs and the various 
breeds of sporting dogs attain in the performance of 
the work to which they are trained, is well known. 

But intelligent as the dog is, he is equaled, and 
perhaps even surpassed, by the elephant. There are 
two modes of capturing the Asiatic elephant, the one 
by pursuing solitary individuals and binding them with 
ropes as they wander at will through the forests, and 
the other by driving a herd of elephants into a previ¬ 
ously prepared pound, and securing the entrance so as 
to prevent their escape. In the former method the 
hunters are aided by certain trained females, termed 
“koomies,” which enter into the spirit of the chase 
with wonderful animation, and help their riders in 
every possible manner. When the koomies see a fine 
elephant, they advance carelessly toward him, plucking 
leaves and grass, as if they were perfectly indifferent to 
his presence. He soon becomes attracted to them, 
when they overwhelm him with such endearing femi¬ 
nine blandishments, and occupy his attention so fully, 
that he does not observe the proceedings of the 
“ mahouts,” or riders. These men, seeing the elephant 
engaged with the koomies, slip quietly to the ground 
and attach their rope nooses to his legs, fastening the 


240 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

ends of the cords to some neighboring tree. Should no 
suitable tree be at hand, the koomies are sagacious 
enough to comprehend the dilemma, and to urge their 
victim toward some large tree which is sufficiently 
strong to withstand his struggles. As soon as the 
preparations are complete the mahouts give the word 
of command to the koomies, who move away, leaving 
the captive elephant to his fate. 

In all work which requires the application of great 
strength combined with singular judgment, the elephant 
is supreme. In piling logs, for example, the elephant 
soon learns the proper mode of arrangement, and will 
place them upon each other with a regularity that 
would not be surpassed by human workmen. Sir 
Emerson Tennent mentions a pair of elephants that 
were accustomed to labor conjointly, and which had 
been taught to raise their wood piles to a considerable 
height by constructing an inclined plane of sloping 
beams, and rolling the logs up the beams. 

The horse is taught to obey the voice of its master 
when he is commanded to start, stop, turn to right or 
left, or go backward. A herders horse learns to drive 
cattle with but little attention from his rider. Horses 
traveling over ground with which they are familiar 
need no guidance when going homeward. Cases are 
on record of horses which have traveled as much as 
twenty miles with their riders asleep, never once 
missing the way. All city people are familiar with 
the wonderful training and intelligence exhibited by 

the horses of the fire department. A case of recent 

/ 


ILLUSTRATIONS OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 24I 

occurrence illustrates their intelligence in adapting 
themselves to unusual circumstances. The hook and 
ladder cart was going to a fire at a headlong speed, 
drawn by four spirited horses, when at a corner it 
struck an obstruction and over-turned, almost killing 
two of the men. Most horses would have broken 
into a run-away under such circumstances, they being 
already in a full run, but these noble beasts stopped 
instantly, and did not move until the matter was 
righted. 

LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 

It is generally taken for granted that animals never 
manifest a love for the beautiful, and it is not very 
evident that what we call a lovely scene would, in 
itself, afford pleasure to a brute ; but there is abundant 
proof that many, if not all, animals are sensitive to 
music. Science tells us that light is only a species of 
wave-like motion ; that all matter has motion of some 
sort, and that sound results, also, from a peculiar form 
of motion. It is not unreasonable to suppose, then, 
that music, with its regular succession of wave-like 
sounds, may strike a responsive chord in the material 
nature of the animal, as the strings of the harp sitting 
idle in the room, vibrate when proper sounds from 
other sources strike them. But it must be the sen¬ 
suous element in music that moves the animal, while 
for men music may have an elevating effect—a spiritual 
fragrance. We must remember that not all sweet 
music is beneficial to the human listener. There are 


16 



242 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

some strains which seem to appeal only to the lower, 
the animal part, of man’s sensuous nature, while there 
are other melodies which lift the feelings above the 
common . things of earth, calming and purifying the 
very soul. Of the moral effect of music animals can 
know nothing, but of their sensibility to the regular 
pulsations of sound in music, many very interesting 
observations have been made. 

There are well authenticated cases of mice coming 
out of their hiding places to listen to music. There 
was an account current years ago of one which came 
out when the music commenced, and retreated when it 
ceased. This operation was repeated several times. 
After the music had continued for some little time, the 
mouse died from the excitement caused by it. Snakes 
are also affected by music, and in a singular way. The 
following was observed by Tennent, in Ceylon: “A 
snake charmer came to my bungalow, requesting me to 
allow him to show me his snakes dancing. As I had 
frequently seen them, I told him I would give him a 
rupee if he would accompany me to the jungle and 
catch a cobra (a most poisonous serpent), that I knew 
frequented the place. He was willing, and, as I was 
anxious to test the truth of the charm, I counted his 
tame snakes, and put a watch over them until I 
returned with him. Before going, I examined the 
man, and satisfied myself he had no snake about his 
person. When we arrived at the spot, he played upon 
a small pipe, and after persevering for some time, out 
came a large cobra from an ant-hill which I knew it 


LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 243 

occupied. On seeing the man, it tried to escape, but 
he caught it by the tail and kept swinging it round 
until we reached the bungalow. He then made it 
dance, but before long it bit him above the knee. He 
immediately bandaged the leg above the bite, and 
applied a snake-stone to the wound to extract the 
poison. He was in great pain for a few minutes, but 
after that it gradually went away, the stone falling off 
just before he was relieved. When he recovered, he 
held up a cloth, at which the snake flew, and caught its 
fangs in it. While in that position, the man passed his 
hand up its back, and, having seized it by the throat, 
he extracted the fangs in my presence and gave them 
to me. He then squeezed out the poison on to a leaf. 
It was a clear, oily substance, and when rubbed on the 
hand produced a fine lather.” 

Old war horses become spirited and lively when 
they hear strains of martial music, but no doubt this is 
partly because it reminds them of their past lives. The 
following communication is vouched for: At three 
different times I was the owner of cats that were 
evidently much influenced by music. The first was 
always strangely moved whenever I sang Ah che la 
murte ognora * from “ Trovatore,” and no matter where 
she was — in what part of the house or grounds, she 
would come to me as soon as the first notes of the song 
reached her; if asleep on the rug, she would awaken 
and come to the piano, by which she would remain 
stationed till the song was finished, after which she 

*In English, “Ah, that death always,” etc. 



244 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

\N 

would resume her former position by the fire. Instru¬ 
mental music had no power over her, nor did any other 
sone than the one mentioned. 

Again, I possessed a cat that I had raised from a 
little kitten. When I first noticed it I was just recov¬ 
ering from an attack of illness, and being incapable of 
reaching the piano, would frequently have on the bed 
near me my guitar, upon which I would, at times, play. 
The kitten seemed wonderfully attracted by the music, 
and would climb upon the bed and sit quietly watching 
me, seeming much pleased. After I was strong enough 
to resume piano playing, the kitten was my constant 
companion. Whenever I seated myself at the instru¬ 
ment, it would either crawl into my lap, or climb upon 
the piano and curl itself upon one of the mats, in either 
of which positions it would be an observant and intent 
listener to either vocal or instrumental performances, 
manifesting no preference for either, seeming to like 
both equally. These habits grew with the kitten’s 
growth, and when it had attained its full size, it still 
manifested the same love for music. Instead of calling 
it by name, I would merely walk to the piano and run 
my fingers over the keys, which was sufficient to bring 
it to me at any and all times. Frequently I would 
leave the instrument open and go off to some other 
part of the house, when I would hear sounds from the 
piano, and upon returning to the parlor would find the 
cat very busily walking up and down the key-board 
making music for itself. Its favorite place for sleeping 
was on the piano stool. 


/ 


LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 


245 


My third pet manifested quite a preference for the 
beautiful song from Gluck’s “Orpheus,” Che faro 
senza EurydiceC Whenever I sang it she would come 
into the room mewing and whining, and with the most 
troubled expression in her eyes, would approach the 
piano and walk around it, and never ceased her plain¬ 
tive cries till I had finished the sonm Once she 
seemed more powerfully influenced than ever before 
or after, and jumping upon a box of music books that 
was in close proximity to the key-board, she put out 
her paws and touched my fingers, never having ceased 
her plaintive cries. I paid no attention to her, when, 
as if to enforce upon me some desire that she could 
not speak, she seized one of my fingers in her mouth 
and left thereon the impress of her teeth. In this last 
instance, as in the first related herein, only the one 
song had power to move her, she, like her predecessor, 
having been indifferent to all other music. 

SYNTHETIC THOUGHT IN ANIMALS. 

Synthetic thought, that is, the .ability to combine, or 
bring together two or more things to produce a desired 
result, is sometimes seen, to a limited extent in animals. 
A timber merchant living in a seaport town of England 
had two remarkably fine dogs that frequently afforded 
striking evidences of sagacity. “Hector” and “Wal¬ 
lace” had often, in quitting the timber-yard, to pass 
through a narrow lane, which ascended a hill leading 

from the sea. In this lane lived an old woman, who 

« 

*“What can I do without Eurydice?” 


246 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

kept a snappish little cur, that always ran out and 
barked at the Newfoundlands. Of this they took no 
notice, or only answered the insolence of the cur by 
a dignified growl. At last the little culprit, emboldened 
by the forbearance of the Newfoundlands, snapped 
at the hind leg of one of them and bit it severely. 
Hector, the dog which was bitten, turned round, and, 
seizing the cur by the neck, carried him leisurely down 
to the sea-side, plunged in, and swam with him to what 
is called “boat’s moorings’—about a hundred yards or 
more from the shore. There he let the unhappy cur 
go, and as he attempted to swim ashore, Hector, every 
now and then struck him with his paw. The cur was 
drowned, but the Newfoundland brought his body 
ashore and laid it out upon the beach—a solemn warn¬ 
ing to all curs against offending the dignity of a New¬ 
foundland. Mr Youatt tells a similar story, but in this 
latter instance capital punishment was not inflicted, a 
severe ducking having been considered a sufficient 
penalty. While the government harbor or pier at 
Donaghadee, I reland,.was building, a battle took place 
between two powerful dogs. One was a Newfound¬ 
land, the other a mastiff. They had a prolonged fight 
upon the pier, from the point of which they both fell 
into the sea; and as the pier, was long and steep, they 
had no means of escape but by swimming a consid¬ 
erable distance. Each began to make for the land as 
best he could. The Newfoundland, being an excellent 
swimmer, very speedily gained the shore, on which he 
stood shaking himself, but at the same time watching 




SYNTHETIC THOUGHT IN ANIMALS. 


247 


the motions of his former antagonist, which, being a 
bad swimmer, was struggling exhausted in the water, 
and just about to sink. In dashed the Newfoundland, 
took the other gently by the collar, kept his head above 
water, and brought him safely on shore. There was a 
peculiar kind of recognition between the two animals. 
They had often fought before, but never did so after¬ 
ward; and upon the Newfoundland dog being acci¬ 
dentally killed by a stone-wagon on the railway passing 
over him, the mastiff languished and lamented for a 
considerable time. 

The bee, compelled to construct her comb in an 
unusual and unsafe position, steadies it by constructing 
a brace of wax-work between the side that inclines 
and the nearest wall of the hive. The spider in like 
manner, whose web is in danger, runs a line, from the 
part exposed to the severest strain or pressure, to the 
nearest point of support, in such a manner as to secure 
the slender fabric. A bird has been known, in like 
manner, to support a bough which proved too frail to 
sustain the weight of the nest, and of her young, 
by connecting it, with a thread, to a stronger branch 
above. 

A tame fox that was kept in a stable-yard had 
managed to strike up a friendship with several of 
the dogs, and would play with them, but could never 
induce the cats to approach him. Cats are very sen¬ 
sitive in their nostrils, and could not endure the odor. 
They would not even walk upon any spot where the 
fox had been standing, and kept as far aloof as pos- 


248 the intellect; kindred topics. 

sible from him. The crafty animal soon perceived 
that the cats would not come near him, and made 
use of his knowledge to cheat them of their break¬ 
fast. As soon as the servant poured out the cats’ 
allowance of milk, the fox would run to the spot 
and walk a few times around the saucer, well know¬ 
ing that none of the rightful owners would approach 
the defiled locality. Day after day the cats lost their 
milk, until the stratagem was discovered, and the milk 
placed in a spot where it could not be reached by 
the fox. 

CONCLUSION. 

The differences between the intelligence of animals 
and the mental powers of man appear in several par¬ 
ticulars. Animals have no analytic thought. They 

see a house, but they see it as a whole, and it 

cannot suggest to them the thought of the separate 

stones and pieces of lumber that are united to form 

the house. 

Animals have no language by which they can trans¬ 
mit experience from one generation to another, and 
therefore they never, as a race, make any progress or 
improvement. The bird and beaver build their domi¬ 
ciles just as well, but no better, than they did six 
thousand years ago, while men avail themselves of the 
experience of all the ages past. Man is the only being 
who uses fire, or metals, or invents or uses machinery; 
and man alone trades, exchanges, and engages in com¬ 
merce. These things mark man as being essentially 


CONCLUSION. 


249 


higher than animals in his having a capacity for prog¬ 
ress. In this connection, man has the wish and the 
power to make his influence felt in places distant from 
his own home, and to have his influence continued 
after his own death, upon future generations. 

The animal is incapable of having a knowledge of 
right and wrong, properly speaking. The trained brute 
may remember that it was chastised when engaged in 
a certain act, and fearing the chastisement, will avoid 
that, or similar acts in the presence of its master, ever 
afterward. But that it ever thinks beyond this fear of 
chastisement, we have no evidence whatever. The 
animal can never be made to understand why an act 
is right or wrong. His instinct always shields his wel¬ 
fare, and, left to himself, he is incapable of degrading 
himself. In his natural life, there is no such thing as 
right or wrong. 

Animals never laugh. They never manifest any 
sense of the ludicrous. They are also incapable of 
moral feelings. We may have a person so described 
to us that we will love or hate, though we never saw 
the person. That is, we are affected by the qualities of 
the person in question, but no animal can conceive of 
abstract qualities; no animal ever loved the master he 
never saw. He is, therefore, incapable of worship in 
the higher sense of that word. 

The animal can do no such thing as study his own 
nature and destiny, and choose a definite and continued 
line of conduct for life. His acts all spring from 
impulse, natural tendencies, or ingrafted habit, while 


250 THE intellect; kindred topics. 

man is capable of foreseeing the results of a habit, and 
of forming his habits accordingly. He can contemplate 
the different possible ends of his life, and choose which 
he will labor to attain. Man is the only being, then, 
who is capable of making a fool of himself. A brute 
will be a brute to the end of its days, but a man may 
become either a devil or an angel. 




t 




HE SENSIBILITIES. 



T will be remembered that in the 
beginning of our study we divided 
the mental powers into three gen¬ 
eral classes: those of the Intellect, 
those of the Sensibility, and those 
of the Will. The Intellect has 

* 

already been discussed, and we now come 
to the Sensibility. Intellect is the great 
knowing and judging power of the world ; 
Sensibility is the motive power, and if we 
would understand ourselves, our fellow-men, 
and the history of the human race, we must 
know something of this motive power 
which impels to action. Nothing was ever done or 
left undone without a feeling of some kind being at the 
bottom of it. Does a merchant labor all day in his 
store ? it is because of a love of money, or of that 
which money will procure. The soldier risks his life 
upon the battle-field from love of country, or of glory. 

A man kills his enemy out of hatred. So all actions, 

251 
















































252 THE SENSIBILITIES. 

little or great, good or bad, result from some exercise 
of Sensibility. The man that knows well this part of 
the mind, knows all the secret springs of action that 
urge mankind to the performance of every deed done. 

We have already seen that a strong body and a 
strong mind should naturally be found together; and 
that strong memory and strong reasoning powers are 
proper companions. The strength of any part of a 
human being, within reasonable and healthy limits, is 
conducive to the strength and health of all other parts. 
H ence we should expect from the harmony of nature to 
find a powerful Sensibility — a quick, whole-souled, 
vigorous feeling, united to a sound, strong Intellect; 
and so we do find it. Those of this world who have 
done great thinking, or great acting, have been persons 
of great feeling as well. They may have been proud, 
or ambitious, or avaricious, or they may have been sym¬ 
pathetic and affectionate — but in some direction, and 
generally in several directions, they were men of strong 
feelings. Such men are strong in love and strong in 
hate — they do nothing weakly. 

ANALYSIS. 

The divisions of Sensibility may be classified as 
the emotions, the affections, and the desires. (See 
page 254.) The emotions have been subdivided into 
two classes: the simple, and the rational. The affec¬ 
tions likewise are of two kinds: love, and hate. And 
the desires are either animal, or rational. 

By simple emotions we understand such as mere 




ANALYSIS OF THE SENSIBILITIES. * 253 

joyousness or sadness without special cause, joy at 
the good fortune of self or an associate, sorrow at 
the death of friends, etc. By rational emotions, we 
mean those of a somewhat higher order: as the feel¬ 
ing of pleasure caused by the beautiful, the right, 
etc., and of sadness caused by the reverse. 

Love and hate are too well understood to need 
defining. 

Animal desires are those of the body: as for food, 
warmth, and action. Rational desires are those of 
the mind: as for wealth, fame, knowledge, power, 
and that broad and universal sentiment commonly 
called the desire for happiness. Some have claimed 
that this desire for happiness of ourselves, which 
would also include the happiness of our friends, is 
the sum total of all the motives of men. And, 
indeed, it is true that in one view of the subject, 
all pursuits are pursuits of happiness. Man’s delib¬ 
erate line of conduct always points to some end to 
be attained which he thinks will increase his great¬ 
est good. But this, the broadest meaning of the 
term, is not the sense in which we will now use 
it. As one of the desires, and a branch of the Sen¬ 
sibilities, it reters more particularly to our desire 
for happy associations, and a freedom from all want 
and all care. 

When an affection or a desire grows unduly power¬ 
ful, it becomes a passion. 

Hope and fear are outgrowths of the desires, the 
element of expectancy being added. Thus, when we 


2 54 


THE SENSIBILITIES. 


desire a thing, and have room to expect it, we hope 
for it; if we dislike a thing, and have any reason 
to expect it, we fear it.' 

A full analysis of the Sensibilities is presented 
as they have just been described, which is, also, 
the order in which the divisions will be treated. 


Simple. « 


'The Emotions. * 


Cheerfulness or Melancholy. 

Sorrow at the Loss of Friends. 
Sympathy with Joy or Sorrow of 
Others. 


.Rational.^ 


r Love. 


Sensibilities. - 


The Affections. - 


* Hate. 


.The Desires. 


' Self-Approval or Disapproval. 
Enjoyment of the Ludicrous. 
Surprise. 

^ Enjoyment of Reverence. 

Love of Husband and Wife. 
Love of Kindred. 

Love of Friends. 

Love of Benefactors. 

Love of Home and Country. 

Envy. 

Jealousy. 

Revenge. 

Food. 

Rest. 

Action. 

Sex. 

' Happiness. 

Knowledge. 

Power 

.Rational. <! Money. 

Superiority. 

Society. 

Esteem. 


Animal. 


Modified by f Hope. 

expectancy. | Fear. 























Ihe Emotions. 


CHEERFULNESS OR MELANCHOLY. 

HO has not observed in his acquaintances a 
radical difference of temperament ? One is 
always cheerful and happy; possesses, as we 
say, an inexhaustible fund of good-humor. 
Another is quiet, melancholy and recluse; 
he rarely smiles, and can but very seldom be 
led into a hearty laugh. 

Happy is the man who possesses the first 
temperament. It is always June to him. 
Nature wears colors that are perennially gay. Indiffer¬ 
ent things are pleasant to him, and sad things are soon 
driven out of his mind by a flood of happier thoughts. 
He is.always bubbling over with joyousness; and his 
happiness is catching; one cannot be long with him 
without feeling something of that same enlivening 
spirit. This happy disposition constitutes the chief 
ornament and value of youth. Care and misfortune 
rest easily upon the young man. He lives in the 
future. Hope paints everything for him, and her 
beautiful colors hide the disagreeable scenes of life. 
As he gets older, a two-fold change takes place: the 

objects of hope grow fewer, and unpleasant memories 

255 



/ 
















256 


THE EMOTIONS. 


grow more numerous, and both have a tendency to 
make him melancholy. Still, there are a few who 
preserve their merry, cheerful dispositions, even after 
they have grown old; — happy, indeed, are such. 

Melancholy has not any necessary connection with 
grumbling and growling. Some men whose disposi¬ 
tions have been so sad that life was burdensome to 
them, have been most gentle and uncomplaining; the 
poet Cowper was such a one. Everything is tinged 
with sadness to them. If they see a beautiful flower, 
it is only to reflect that it must soon fade, and its pres¬ 
ent loveliness gives them no pleasure. Wealth is 
unstable, honors hampered with toilsome care, youth 
fleeting: therefore they derive no happiness from the 
possession of these by themselves or friends. 

Poets have generally possessed this disposition. 
One of the greatest of the poetic brotherhood has very 
beautifully said that poetry, like a rainbow, must always 
have a dark background. Byron thus describes his 
own feelings: 

Melancholy 

Sits on me, as a cloud along the sky, 

Which will not let the sunbeams through, nor yet 
Descend in rain, and end; but spreads itself 
Twixt heaven and earth, like envy between man 
And man — an everlasting mist. 

Besides the two classes of persons just mentioned, 
those who are habitually cheerful, and those who are 
habitually sad, there is another, in whom the extremes 
of both dispositions are joined. One minute they are 



CHEERFULNESS OR MELANCHOLY. 257 

sunk into the deepest sadness, and the next they are 
lifted into the most extravagant of hilarious gayety. 
The melancholy Cowper, who once came near com¬ 
mitting suicide, wrote the comic ballad, “John Gilpin.” 
Edward Young, author of “Night Thoughts,” perhaps 
the gloomiest poem in the English language, was a 
lively, witty man in society. So was Byron. Comic 
Tom Hood, who wrote so many puns and funny things 
of all sorts, wrote also the sad “ Song of the Shirt,” and 
the “Bridge of Sighs,” and the “Ode to Melancholy.” 
A famous comedian was convulsing all Paris with laugh¬ 
ter. One day a gentleman called upon a physician to 
know whether anything could be done for the extreme 
melancholy from which he suffered. “ Go and hear 

-, the comedian,” said the physician. “Alas! I, 

myself, am -, the comedian,” said the sad man, 

and went away uncured. 

SORROW AT THE LOSS OF FRIENDS. 

✓ 

\ 

Among the more common emotions is the poignant 
grief we feel at the loss of our friends. There are few 
who do not know from sad experience, how deep and 
abiding is the wound left in the heart by the death of a 
beloved friend. Two lives grow together, in the course 
of a long and close companionship, until they are so 
firmly united that each seems necessary to the existence 
of the other, and when they are torn rudely apart, the 
shock is an overwhelming one to the survivor. 

At first, the mind is thrown completely into the 

shadow — the great cloud. No light appears. The 
17 





2 5 8 


THE EMOTIONS. 


world looks dark, and the future utterly void of hope. 
There is only the gloomy prospect of a long, lonely, 
barren existence. A void, “ an aching void,” is left in 
our lives, which it seems impossible that we can ever 
fill. We could wish to die, that we might be with our 
friend. Our spirits break down, and seek relief by 
pouring out their sorrow in hysterical sobs, moans, and 
tears. Now and then a strong soul bears up and is 
silent and tearless. He is like a fine old tree in the 
forest, that has been stricken with lightning and stands 
blackened and lifeless, but strong and uncomplaining 
still. Such men are the noblest of earth. Their grief 
is not the less keen because they do not give it voice; 
nay, it is the more so ; it is a pent up fire that scorches 
and withers the bosom that holds it. 

After a time, the first violence of the sorrow 
subsides, and it becomes a sort of melancholy. Time 
is a great assuager of all kinds of pain. New associa- 
tions are gradually formed which in some measure fill 
the place of the old one. New cares and new labors 
occupy the attention, and the loss suffered long ago 
comes up less frequently to mind, and when it does 
arise, it brings with it only a mild and subdued pain; * 
not the sharp, piercing one it once did. 

One effect of death is to hallow the memory of the 
departed. The weaknesses p.nd foibles of our friends, 
to which we were so keenly alive during the time they 
were with us, are forgotten when we have them no 
longer. We love to dwell upon their amiable traits, 
and think of the good they did; a peculiarly holy 


SORROW AT THE LOSS OF FRIENDS. 259 

atmosphere surrounds them, and throws its glamour 
over the whole course of their lives. 

4 

SYMPATHY. 

The word sympathy is derived from two Greek 
words, one of which means with, and the other, feel- 
mg, or sensibility. Thus, the proper meaning of 
sympathy is a fellow-feeling — a feeling with; and it 
includes all cases where one partakes of the feelings 
of another. It is commonly used to denote merely 
the feeling of sorrow at another’s sorrow — a mean¬ 
ing which is too restricted. We not only mourn 
when others mourn, but we rejoice when they rejoice'; 
and the one is as much sympathy as the other. It 
is one of the finest traits of human character that 
we share the joy and sorrow of our neighbors. With 
sympathy absent, this would be a sad world, indeed. 
Men would be wholly selfish; there would be no hesi¬ 
tation about inflicting any amount of pain upon others 
for our own advancement and comfort. 

The feeling is a natural one, and makes its appear¬ 
ance very early in life. The child of one year will cry 
* when it sees its mother in trouble, and will toddle up 
to rub mamma’s cheek, and kiss her. The same child 
will laugh and crow when it sees others merry, not 
knowing in either case why it laughs or cries, but doing 
so out of pure sympathy. Even brutes have this feel¬ 
ing, to some extent. One animal will sometimes help 
another of the same kind in distress, if it is possible to 
do so. Not very long ago, an interesting anecdote 



26 o 


THE EMOTIONS. 


went the rounds of the papers, which will illustrate this 
power of sympathy in birds. A gentleman walking in 
the fields one cold morning, had his attention attracted 
by the strange actions of a number of sparrows, who 
seemed to be pecking at the tail of another one. Upon 
the approach of the gentleman, the birds all flew away, 
except the one they had been working with, which 
could not go, as its tail was frozen fast in the ice. Its 
sympathetic comrades had been trying to set it free 
from its uncomfortable position, and probably they 
would have succeeded in doing so finally, had they not 
been forestalled by the gentleman. 

The end for which this tendency was implanted in 
our nature is very evident;—it is a means of preventing 
the extremity of cruelty and heartlessness which would 
often result from the conflicting interests which agitate 
the minds of men, if there were nothing to counteract 
them. If there were no such thing as sympathy, the 
aspirant for wealth or position would not hesitate to 
crush any one who presented an obstacle to his farther 
progress. Another purpose of sympathy is to lead men 
to acts of mercy. But for it a person in danger would 
get but little help. As it is, if one sees any person in a 
burning building, and in imminent danger of perishing 
in the flames, he rushes in to the rescue, without a 
thought of his own peril in so doing. If it were only a 
matter of reason and deliberation, he would weigh the 
chances of his own death or injury, and probably the 
helpless person in the building would be left to die. 
Still another benefit arises from sympathy. One 



SYMPATHY. 


26 l 


devoid of this property is at a serious loss when con¬ 
fronted with new sets of circumstances, and persons 
with whose manners and ways of thinking he is not 
familiar. He cannot conform himself to the new sur¬ 
roundings ; he stands aloof from other people and can¬ 
not understand them. On the contrary, one who 
possesses a lively sympathy, throws himself at once 
into the swift current of life, and becomes a part of it. 
He can comprehend the motives which govern the 
actions of men and can enter into them. He perceives 
that men are oftener mistaken than willfully wrong, and 
consequently he has less to chafe and worry him than 
the one who thinks the world is all in a great conspi¬ 
racy against him and the principles which he regards as 
right. The sympathetic man, too, is the only one who 
can get a proper and complete idea of history. Of 
what good is a knowledge of the bare facts of history 
unless we can look through them to the motives which 
brought them about, and thus be able to calculate 
somewhat upon the probable results of those same 
motives in the future ? 

A notable peculiarity of sympathy is that it makes 
but little difference what the object of it is. The 
execution or imprisonment of a criminal excites our 
sympathy to a very high degree, even though we may 
believe that he fully deserves all the punishment he is 
getting. We would plunge into the water to save a 
poor, insignificant boy, almost as promptly as if he 
were a man of ability and prominence. Brutes even, 
when in distress, excite our sympathies to an almost 


262 


THE EMOTIONS. 


incredible degree. This is a wise provision, and acts 
beneficially in a great many ways. . 

The theory has been advanced that sympathy is 
only an outgrowth and exhibition of our selfish nature; 
that if we sympathize with a person in trouble, it is only 
because we imagine ourselves in his place, or because 
we fear we may have like trouble, or some other such 
reason as those. But for my part, I cannot narrow 
down all the good and kind actions of life, and base 
them upon the one ignoble principle of selfishness. It 
seems to me that sympathy, for one thing, stands on a 
foundation much broader than selfishness. Moreover, 
it has been very acutely and justly objected to this 
theory, that if it were true, the most cowardly person, 
or the most selfish one, would be the most sympathetic 
and merciful; whereas the exact opposite is known to 
be the truth. 

SELF-APPROVAL, OR DISAPPROVAL. 

The emotions which we have thus far considered 
belong to the class denominated simple emotions. 
There yet remain to be discussed those called rational; 
that is, those which involve the use of the reason 
and other high faculties of the mind, as well as of 
the sensibility. 

Among the more important of these rational emo¬ 
tions, self-approval and disapproval are prominent. 
“ Self is a very agreeable object,” and upon it is 
bestowed a large portion of our thought and atten¬ 
tion. When we find that our actions have been 


SELF-APPROVAL, OR DISAPPROVAL. 263 

meritorious, we naturally take a keen pleasure in 
the contemplation of them. When they have been 
the opposite of praiseworthy, we derive anything but 
pleasure from thinking about them. So, when we 
find that we possess qualities of mind, body, or spirit, 
which are worthy of commendation, we are glad of 
it, and rightly so. It is not wrong to be proud of 
any good qualities we may be fortunate enough to 
possess. It is held by some that a man ought 
to be unconscious of his good qualities, abilities, etc. 
The man who has any ability will surely have sense 
enough to know it. He cannot help knowing it; if 
he did not, he would, indeed, be a strange phenome¬ 
non. I never heard of such a person, and I do not 
believe such a one ever existed, or ever can exist. 
No, it is right and proper that every man should 
carry all the pride that his actions and abilities will 
support. But right there the limit should come. A 
man should not overload himself with pride. He 
has no right to be proud of qualities he does not 
possess. The conceited man is contemptible; he has 
no right to let his pride carry him to the extent of 
trespassing upon the rights and feelings of other 
people. The arrogant, assuming, supercilious man is 
also contemptible; he has no right to give himself 
up to affectation of any kind whatever. The proud 
man treads a narrow path ; he must be honest, sin¬ 
cere, direct, unassuming, and must know just where 
his merits end. It will not do to let his pride pass 
beyond the foundation that he has for its support. 


264 the emotions. 

\ 

But when he treads that narrow path, he is the 
finest sort of man. He is the man who will accom¬ 
plish something in the world, and leave it somewhat 
the richer for his having lived in it. 

One of the keenest griefs that a person can possibly 
have, is the consciousness of his own unworthiness, and 
especially of his own moral unworthiness. The ser¬ 
pent’s tooth of remorse digs very deep, and leaves a 
very sharp sting. In the words of Dryden: 

Nor sharp revenge, nor hell itself can find 
A fiercer torment than a guilty mind. 

Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse, 

Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews. 

Remorse is bitterest in the noblest souls; as Scott 
has very finely said: 

High minds of native pride and force 

Most deeply feel thy pangs, remorse! 

Fear for their scourge mean villains have; 

Thou art the torturer of the brave. 

THE LUDICROUS. 

There are few kinder things which nature has done. 
for us than the giving of.a sense of the ludicrous, the 
ability to be amused, and to laugh. Without it, the 
weary grind, grind, grind of the world’s business would, 
after a time, become insufferably monotonous and tire¬ 
some. A good laugh is one of the best medicines a 
man can take; it cheers and revives him as nothing 
else can. Those persons who never smile are much to 


THE LUDICROUS. 265 

be pitied ; and their lives must be as dreary as the 
Sahara. 

No full definition of this emotion will be offered; 
everybody knows what it is, but it is extremely hard to 
define, and most writers who have tried to do so have 
only succeeded in darkening the matter. 

Mirth is occasioned in two general ways, by blunders 
and by intentional wit. Each of these may refer to 
physical things, or to ideas. These classes do not, 

perhaps, include every occasion for mirth, but certainly 

> 

very nearly all of them. 

We laugh, for instance, at an extremely awkward 
person, or at one dressed in an uncouth manner. We 
could scarcely prevent a smile at seeing a dignified, 
well-dressed gentleman fall flat in the mud ; we should 
laugh outright if a conceited, over-dressed fop should 
fall. Our risibles are very much affected at what is 
called an “ Irish bull,” in which a person accidentally 
says something ridiculous or impossible. So we laugh 
when a person intends to say one thing and says 
another; intends a compliment, perhaps, and gives an 
insult. A young lady talking with King George II., 
remarked that she had seen almost everything, but that 
there was one sight she had never yet seen, which she 
was very anxious to witness, and that was a coronation. 
A gentleman, on being introduced to Mr. Longfellow, 
desiring to say something complimentary, delivered him¬ 
self thus: “ Sir, I am rejoiced to meet you; I am one of 
the very few persons who have read your Evangeline.” 
Another, in a similar manner, said to Mr. Tennyson, 


266 


THE EMOTIONS. 


“ Ah, I have your poems, of course. I keep them in 
my bedroom, and almost every night I go to sleep over 
them.” So, with any blunder; if it be not followed by 
serious consequences, it is likely to provoke a laugh. 

Of intentional wit concerning physical things, those 
abominations known as “practical jokes” are the best 
examples. The witty use of ideas is the largest and 
the proper field for humor. The varieties, from repar¬ 
tee, which is the highest, to punning, which is about 
the lowest, are almost innumerable. 

The use of humor and wit has already been indi¬ 
cated. It is the spice of life, and does as much as any- 
thing else to make it endurable. But they have their 
dangers also. Too many wits care only to exhibit 
their powers, being not at all particular as to the object 
upon which they exercise them, a course which leads to 
a great deal of hard feeling. A man ought not to 
wound the feelings of another merely because he can. 
A witty, sarcastic word often cuts worse than a sword. 
There is some danger, too, that the possessor of wit, if 
his mind be not well balanced, may make it his idol, 
and for its sake neglect things that are of more conse¬ 
quence. Properly used, however, it is the most effective 
weapon to employ against folly and some species of 
vice. For such purposes, it is a lancet that may be 
used unsparingly and with the best results. A great 
many persons are more amenable to ridicule than to 
law, or any other of the restraining influences of society. 
If a vice can be made to appear ridiculous, such persons 
will be driven out of it. Rousseau says in his “ Con- 


THE LUDICROUS. 


267 


fessions,” that it was not the wicked things he had 
done that gave him most trouble to confess, but the 
ridiculous ones. 

t 

SURPRISE. 

The occurrence of any event unexpectedly arouses 
in us the sensation known as surprise. Its effect is to 
stimulate the mind to more vigorous action for the 
time being, and in this way perhaps it becomes a pleas¬ 
ant emotion, for healthy action is always agreeable to a 
mind not already wearied. Its use is to give more zest 
to life, and relieve it of its sameness. It unites as an 
element with the ludicrous and with other emotions, 
more or less; and whenever it is found with them, it 
heightens the pleasure received from them. Another 
purpose is possibly to give warning of approaching 
■danger, and avoid it, by startling the mind into giving 
increased attention to any unusual sights or sounds. 

Its opposite is what the French call ennui , a feel¬ 
ing of uneasy wearisomeness at the tedious repiti- 

V 

tion of the same routine. The principal service which 
emmi renders us is probably that of spurring us up to 
greater exertions in order that we may rid ourselves of 
the disagreeable sensation. 


THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL. 

The emotion of pleasure at the sight of anything 
either beautiful or sublime, is one of the highest 
emotions we have. It is also one of those concerning 
which many disputes are waged. Without stopping to 


268 


THE EMOTIONS. 


prove it, let us take it for granted that qualities of 
beauty and sublimity do reside in certain objects, and 
that they awaken in us delightful sensations accord¬ 
ingly. The difference between the sublime and the 
beautiful is hard to state in the form of definitions. A 
few examples will show it better than any words can 
tell it. 

A gently rolling, well kept, grassy lawn, with here 
and there a tree, is beautiful, but it is not in any sense 
sublime. A rough, jagged, barren mountain is sublime, 
but not beautiful. The countless hosts of stars, cov¬ 
ering the vast blue expanse of the heavens, form a 
sight at once beautiful and sublime, and both in the 
highest degree. A thing, then, may be beautiful alone, 
or sublime alone, or it may be both. In general it 
may be said that beauty conveys the idea of delicacy 
and skill, while sublimity is majestic and strong. It is 
thought by some that the term sublime can only be 
applied to the works of nature: this I can scarcely 
grant, although certainly the works of nature are more 
sublime than anything man has ever produced, because 
vaster and mightier. I cannot but think the “ Shy- 
lock” sublime, and the description of hell in “ Paradise 
Lost,” and a great many other passages in our own 
and foreign literature. A great building, as St. Peters 
in Rome, for instance, is sublime. 

The beautiful calms us and soothes our spirits by 
its deliciousness. The sublime, on the other hand, 
agitates and oppresses us, though it is not less pleasing 
than the beautiful — more so, perhaps. We are over- 



THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL. 269 

awed by the presence of a mightier power, we feel our 
own weakness and insignificance, when gazing upon the 
billows of the ocean, as they lash, and foam, and heave, 
or upon the terrible cataract of the Niagara, or upon 
the majestic, towering form of the Jungfrau. The 
emotion of beauty and the conception of it are two 
distinct things. We feel beauty without any special 
thought. Then we may begin to reflect upon it, to 
study it with a view of finding why it so affected us, 
and thus get a clear conception of it as a beautiful 
object. Again we may know that it is beautiful, that 
it has been pronounced so by a great many competent 
judges, that it fulfills all the requirements of beauty, 
but, without being in any way moved by its loveliness. 
This emotion is one which may be, and should be, cul¬ 
tivated. It is capable of very largely increasing the 
enjoyment of life, and there are no dangers or excesses 
to be avoided in the honest use of this power. We 
should take every opportunity of seeing that which is 
purely beautiful or sublime; it is an elevating and* 
improving enjoyment. 


REVERENCE. 

Man has been called “the worshipping animal,” and 
it is, indeed, a characteristic which would, alone, dis¬ 
tinguish him from animals. Wherever we go, in what¬ 
ever clime, or age, or country, where man is, there we 
find shrines, and altars, and humble devotees in atti¬ 
tudes of worship. No tribe of human beings has ever 
been found wholly without some form of worship, or 


THE EMOTIONS. 


2/0 

some idea of a God. It is a universal and significant 
seal of the divine nature of man that he should revere 
and seek to draw near to the mysterious, the unknown, 
the all-wise, the all-powerful, all-just and good, which 
he feels is forever above him, ruling over him, and in 
some mysterious way, shaping his destiny. Out of this 
feeling in man has grown his most absurd and grovel¬ 
ling superstitions whenever he has ventured to adopt a 
material form to represent the object of his reverence; 
and out of this feeling, when held in the realm of the 
imagination, in the mind’s ideal of perfection, has 
come, not idolatry, but the very highest aspirations, 
the most noble and pure desires and ambitions. 

Reverence, as the word is commonly used, applies to 
other kinds of feeling as well as to that shown in forms 
of worship. We reverence aged people, but it should 
be noted that it is not simply their age alone that 
commands our respect. The aged are our superiors 
in wisdom, in experience and knowledge, and having 
already lived long and useful lives, we, along with all 
the world, owe them a debt of gratitude. The sight 
of an aged person calls all these ideas to mind, and the 
feeling of reverence is upon us. But how quickly this 
feeling vanishes if we see that this person’s life has 
been given to evil-doing and injustice to others, and in 
place of reverence, comes pity or abhorrence. It is 
plain that reverence harmonizes only with ideas of 
justice, purity, right, the mysterious, the benevolent, 
and the superior. Because of the elements of mystery 
and superiority, the sight of the boundless and mighty 


REVERENCE. 


271 


ocean, the calm broad canopy of the star-lit heavens, 
the grand harmonies of divine music, or any thing that 
begets within us mingled feelings of the sublime and 
beautiful, brings us also, very near to reverence. , 

This emotion has been abused by some, and labeled 
“superstition,” because it pays respect to the unknown 
and the mysterious ; but seeing that the unknown is 
limitless, and even eternity may possibly not fathom it, 
may we not reasonably suppose that a uniformly wise 
Nature has a good purpose to accomplish by this uni¬ 
versal and deep-rooted sentiment ? Even if we refuse 
to recognize Revelation, certainly the lessons of history 
are now broad enough to teach us that as man reveres 
the pure, the just, the right, the benevolent, and all that 
is beyond and above him, he will be bettered and enno¬ 
bled; and hence, reverence deserves a high place among 
the essential elements of man’s nature. 


\ 






he Affections. 




lE have already seen that the affections were 
| of two opposite kinds : love and hate. Of 
| love, the principal varieties are love of 
husband and wife, love of kindred, love 
of friends, love of benefactors, and love of 
home and country. 


LOVE OF HUSBAND AND WIFE. 

Of all loves, there is none so mighty as that 
of a husband for his wife, and hers for him. 
There are no other persons whose lives are so 
intimately associated, whose interests are so 
absolutely one. They are like two streams 
that have united and formed another, broader, 
deeper, greater in every way than either of them 
was before; and as, a little way below the junction, the 
streams become so thoroughly united that the waters 
of the one cannot be distinguished from those of the 
other, so a man and his wife grow, or ought to grow, 
together in mind and in spirit. Whatever affects the 
husband, affects the wife, and in the same way. There 
can be no discord between their best interests. 

Their love is of a peculiar kind. There is no other 

272 



















LOVE OF HUSBAND AND WIFE 273 

in any way like it. It combines in itself, but in a 
higher degree, the elements of confidence, intimacy, 
etc., that go to make friendship ; the closest possible 
union of interests ; that sort of love which grows out 
of the difference in their constitutions; and over all 
is fixed the seal of law and society which binds them 
together before the world, and makes the honor and 
reputation of both demand that they should live 
together in such a way as befits man and wife. 

The wise and good of every age have left their 
testimony in favor of the mutual love of one man with 
one woman. Benjamin Franklin, who wrote strongly 
in favor of the marital relation, became convinced at an 
early period in his own life of the folly of bachelorhood, 
and sought a partner in marriage. He made a faithful 
husband and a kind father, and we see him, even in old 
age, speaking mournfully of the death of the favorite 
son of his early life, which died while yet a little child. 
Though he was never an ardent lover, like the lovers 
we like to read of in novels, he was a tender and con¬ 
siderate husband, of whom his wife was proud—in 
whom his wife was happy. “We throve together,” 
says Franklin, “and ever endeavored to make each 
other happy.” It were well if all lovers of the ardent 
description could say the same after a married life of 
forty years. Their home, at first, was plain and frugal 
in the extreme. A pure conjugal love needs no golden 
trappings to make it blessed. “ We kept no idle 
servants,” says Franklin; “our table was plain and 

simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, 
18 



THE AFFECTIONS. 


274 

my breakfast was, for a long time, bread and milk (no 
tea), and I ate it out of a two-penny earthen porringer, 
with a pewter spoon ; but mark how luxury will enter 
families, and make a progress in spite of principle : 
being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a 
china bowl, with a spoon of silver. They had been 
bought for me without my knowledge by my wife, and 
had cost her the enormous sum of three-and-twenty 
shillings; for which she had no other excuse or 
apology to make, but that she thought her husband 

deserved a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any 

« 

of his neighbors.” 

LOVE OF KINDRED. 

There are few attachments so strong as that which 
subsists between kindred, especially between parent 
and child. There is a dispute about the origin of this 
attachment — as to whether it is inherent in our nature, 
or is an outgrowth of relationship and the associations 
imposed by it. It seems to be a combination of the 
two. The germ of it is natural, but its growth and 
full development are very largely the result of circum¬ 
stances. There are three principal kinds of relation¬ 
ship, and three principal kinds of affection growing 
out of them — parental, filial, fraternal. 

Of all these, the strongest and most enduring is the 
parental. There is probably no other love so strong 
as that of the parent for his child, except that of a hus¬ 
band and wife for each other. From the hour of his 
birth, on through childhood, youth and manhood, the 




YOUNG 


AT HOME. 


































LOVE OF KINDRED. 


2/5 

child is the object of the tenderest and most anxious 
solicitude on the part of the parent. No hardship is 
so severe that the parent will not willingly undergo it 
for the sake of his offspring. He will cheerfully go to 
the extent of laying down his own life, that his child 
may live and be happy. Indeed, his love seems to 
grow with the demands made upon it. The child 
which receives the tenderest love is probably the 
poor, weakly one whose health and welfare have to be 
most constantly guarded, and whose frail constitution 
seems liable to break down at any moment. The 
rugged, proud-spirited, independent child, who is able 
to take care of himself, is the one who generally gets 
the smallest share of affection. As compared with 
each other, the mother’s love is doubtless stronger than 
the father’s. No other, not even that of husband and 
wife, is so patient and enduring. Coldness, lack of 
appreciation, and breach of marital vows, will usually 
chill the affection of a married pair; not so the 
mother’s for her son or daughter. The son may be 
most ungrateful and cruel; he may beat and rob his 
mother in his drunken frenzy ; he may be a criminal of 
the worst class, and an ontcast from society; still the 
mother’s love does not forsake him ; she meets each 
fresh outrage with renewed forgiveness and bestowal 
of confidence. It is almost always the mother who 
stands with pleading voice between the erring child 
and angry, outraged father. It rarely happens that 
the child is disinherited and cast out of his ancestral 
home by the mother. She could not find it in her 


276 


THE AFFECTIONS. 


heart to resort to such harsh extremes. Whether this 
is a result of constitutional differences, or whether it 
grows out of the closer companionship which the 
mother has with her children, and the greater amount 
of care and pain she is compelled to undergo on their 
account, I am not prepared to say. 

Next in strength to parental affection is filial — that 
of child to parent. There is no more beautiful sight 
than that of a young person leaning with affectionate, 
reverent trust upon the parents who gave him birth, 
unless it be that of the same child, after he has attained 
to his full powers, and his father and mother have 
grown old and feeble, carefully and lovingly supporting 
their declining years, and neglecting nothing which can 
conduce to their comfort and convenience. Far too 
often we find the direct opposite of this: the rude, inso¬ 
lent, disobedient young child, and the cold, unloving, 
neglectful older one — a pitiful sight, and one con¬ 
demned by the unanimous voice of the world. 

As the relationship existing between brothers and 
sisters is not so close as that between parent and child, 
their mutual affection is not generally so strong or so 
lasting. Nevertheless it ought to be, and it often is, a 
bond of great tenderness and beauty. Young people 
need bosom friends, confidants, and it is well for them 
if a brother or sister, whose interest in them is genuine, 
pure and unselfish, can occupy that position. Those 
young men and women who have brothers and sisters 
that take an affectionate interest in them, and in whom 
they may always repose the utmost confidence, are 




LOVE OF KINDRED. 


277 


much less likely than others to stray from the paths of 
rectitude; their chances are much better for living 
happy, fruitful lives. 

LOVE OF FRIENDS, 

“Poor is the friendless master of a world: 

A world in purchase of a friend, is gain.”— Young. 

“ Happy he who finds a friend whose heart and 
spirit are congenial to him; a friend who unites himself 
to him by a conformity of tastes, of sentiments, and of 
knowledge ; a friend who is not tormented by ambition 
or interest; — who prefers the shade of a tree rather 
than the pomp of a court! — happy he who possesses 
a friend ! ”—De Maistre . 

In all ages of the world, friendship has been held to 
be one of the most beautiful affections. The names 
and deeds of Damon and Pythias, of Syracuse, will 
doubtless be remembered and praised as long as the 
slightest vestige of Grecian history remains in the 
minds of men. And, indeed, what could be holier and 
more admirable than pure, disinterested, self-sacrificing 
friendship, such as theirs ? Something must be lacking 
in the man who can pass through life, surrounded by 
thousands of people, and yet have no friends. A 
complete man irresistibly attracts people unto him. 
A mutual affection, in the highest degree pleasant and 
profitable, springs up between him and those by whom 
he is surrounded. 

It may be worth while to inquire somewhat into the 




278 


THE AFFECTIONS. 


nature of friendship; and first, into the elements which 
compose it. The first is acquaintanceship. Generally? 
friendship is a plant of slow growth, though there may 
be occasional cases of friendship at first sight, as there 
are of love at first sight. Long acquaintance acts in 
two principal ways to produce and increase friendship. 
We can always find something in a man’s nature to 
admire, if we know him well, enough. No one is utterly 
destitute of attractive qualities, and the more of these 
we discover in any man, the more likely we are to 
entertain a friendship for him. Again, with the lapse 
of time spent together, the community of knowledge 
and experience grows greater; there is a larger com¬ 
mon ground for intercourse. Anyone who has seen two 
old people, who formerly lived in the same village, had 
the same friends, and passed through the same experi¬ 
ences, talk for hours about old times, will know what 
this means. Says Horace Walpole: “Old friends are 
the great blessings of one’s latter years. Half a word 
conveys one’s meaning. They have memory of the 
same events, and have the same mode of thinking. I 
have my young relations that may grow upon me, for 
my nature is affectionate, but can they grow old 
friends? My age forbids that. Still less, can they 
grow companions. Is it friendship to explain half one 
says ? One must relate the history of one’s memory 

1 

and idkas; and what is that to the young but old 
stories?” “The friend whom we have long- and inti- 
mately known,” says Haven ; “the friend of other, and 
earlier, and, it may be, .happier years, is intimately 


LOVE OF FRIENDS. 


2/9 

connected with 'our own history. His life and our own 
have run side by side, or rather, like vines springing’ 
from separate roots, have intertwined their branches 
until they present themselves as one to the eye. It 
is this close connection of my friend with whatever 
pertains to myself, of his history with my history, and 
his life with my life, that contributes a great measure 
of the regard and interest I feel for him. He has 
become, as it were, a part of < myself. The thought 
of him awakens in my mind pleasing remembrances, 
and is associated with agreeable conceptions of the 
walks, the studies, the sports, the varied enjoyments 
and the varied sorrows that we have shared together.” 

Besides this of long acquaintance, there are other 
elements equally necessary. As the excellent De 
Maistre indicated, in the passage quoted above, there 
must be some “ conformity of tastes, of sentiments, and 
of knowledge.” There must be some common ground 
upon which they can meet. I do not see how it would 
be possible for the business man who knows nothing 
but his trade, and the farmer who knows nothing but 
his farm, to form a friendship. If they had, over and 
above their business, a common love for some kind of 
sport, or for some outside branch of knowledge, or 
anything else, then friendship would be very possible. 
Neither do I think it would be possible that any friend¬ 
ship should exist between the scholar of refined and 
moral habits, and the uncouth ragamuffin, or the man 
who gives himself up to debauchery. Scholars, busi¬ 
ness men, farmers, mechanics, fops, bummers, all classes 


28 o 


THE AFFECTIONS. 


of men, will generally form their friendships within 
their own ranks — not always, however. 

On the other hand, there must not be too great a 
conformity in the tastes and opinions and knowledge 
of friends. Nothing is so tiresome as conversation with 
a person who agrees with you in everything. There is 
nothing to give it zest and life. More than that, every 
one is deficient in something, and there is a natural 
tendency in all persons to supply this deficiency as far 
as possible, by association with those who possess, in a 
large degree, the very qualities lacking in themselves. 
Hence the well known fact that people usually marry 
their opposites ; it comes from a feeling of a lack of 
completeness, and a desire to make themselves more 
nearly complete. 

Another essential to friendship is respect. I could 
feel no friendship for a man or woman whom I could 
not thoroughly respect and admire. There are many 
things which might occasion this admiration ; we may 
esteem a ,man for his native genius, for his learning, 
for his honesty and good morals, for his piety, for 
his courage, for his physical power, and a thousand 
other things. But some of these he must have in 
order to produce esteem, and without esteem there 
can be no friendship. 

A dispute has been handed down to us from antiq¬ 
uity, as to whether it is possible for a man to feel 
a high degree of friendship for each of a great many 
people at the same time. I incline to think not. He 
may have a friendly feeling for them all, and wish them 



LOVE OF FRIENDS. 


281 

well, but I think he will scarcely feel that close degree 
of friendship which makes a man willing to make great 
sacrifices for the sake of the love he bears his friend. 
Two of the keenest observers and thinkers of all 
time were Moliere and Aristotle. Moliere says that 
“ Esteem is founded upon some preference, and to 
esteem all the world is not to esteem anything.” Aris¬ 
totle says: “He who hath many friends, hath none.” 
There is a Spanish proverb which asserts that “a friend 
to everybody is a friend to nobody.” It is a general 
principle in physics, and, perhaps, also in metaphysics, 
that whatever is spread out over a great extent of 
surface, must of necessity be thinner than if confined 
within narrower limits. Of course some persons are 
capable of more affection than others; but it may be 
believed that the same person’s love for a friend will 
always be stronger if he has only a few friends, than 
if he has many. 

Genuine friendship should not be much affected by 
change of circumstances. For example, a true friend 
will not turn the cold shoulder to a man who has been 
unfortunate enough to lose his property, or whose good 
name has been assailed by calumny. There is this, 
however: friendship is not generally proof against 
lono- absence without communication. Moreover, as 

o 

has been remarked, it requires, as a basis, some degree 
of unison in habits, condition, etc. Now, when a man 
loses his property and becomes poor, it generally 
changes his mode of life in such a way that he is not 
brought into contact with his former friends. Hence 


282 


THE AFFECTIONS. 


the element of association disappears. His manners 
and character usually change somewhat, along with 
his outward circumstances. He loses the current of 
feeling and thought in his old circle, and gets into 
that of a new one. Thus friends, sincere and honest 
friends, may and do, often unconsciously grow apart, 
after a change in the outward circumstances of either. 
It is folly to denounce all the former friends of such a 
man as hollow, selfish, and mercenary, merely because 
the old associations are not now maintained ; and it is 
not only folly, but rank injustice. There is just as 
much sincere, honest friendship among the rich as 
among the poor. 

LOVE OF BENEFACTORS. 

This bears some resemblance to friendship, and 
generally leads to friendship in cases where the latter 
does not already exist. The distinctive element in love 
of benefactors is gratitude — thankfulness for favors 
conferred. Our gratitude seems to be not so much 
regulated by the nature of the favor as by the char¬ 
acter and motives of the one who confers it. If one 
man should give us a large sum of money of which 
we stood in great need, giving it for the sake of 
some benefit to accrue to himself by that act, we 
should not feel nearly so grateful to him as to 
another who might loan us a smaller sum out of 
pure good will to us. In fact, in the first case we 
should feel little, if any, gratitude; in the other, the 
feeling would be quite strong. 



LOVE OF HOME AND COUNTRY. 2S3 

LOVE OF HOME AND COUNTRY. 

The source of the love of home and of country 
is a little difficult to trace. Perhaps the principal 
^element may be the one of association that we have 
met with so often already. A man’s home, and in 
a broader, looser way, his country, is linked in mem¬ 
ory with everything he holds most dear: his friends, 
his happy childhood, his plans for the future, his 
disappointments — everything. 

u It is strange how the soul’s tendrils cling to the spot 
That has witnessed our fullness of sorrow or joy; 

But cling there they will, and desert they will not, 

Though our lives may have drifted afar from the scene.” 

One noticeable fact in connection with this subject 
is that our love of home or country is very little 
affected by the physical desirability of them. The 
poor man loves his leaky, crazy, tottering cottage as 
■well, perhaps better, than the rich man loves his 
magnificent palace; and he gets fully as much happi¬ 
ness out of it. The Greenlander loves his cold and 
sterile land better than the inhabitants of the fertile 
southern plains love theirs. Indeed, it seems to be 
almost a eeneral rule that dwellers in a barren, mount- 
ainous, inhospitable region, are more patriotic than 
those who are blest with every rich gift of nature. 
Moreover, when a country is in its infancy and can 
■offer but few advantages, its people seem inspired with 
a warmer fire of patriotism than afterward, when it has 


284 


THE AFFECTIONS. 


grown rich and powerful, and has made its flag to be 
respected upon all the waters of the globe. There is, 
however, something that steps in to take the place 
of real love of country, and that is national pride. 
Napoleon inspired his soldiers with his own enthu¬ 
siasm by reminding them that forty centuries looked 
down upon them from the summits of the pyramids 
near them. Whatever an Englishman, or a French¬ 
man, or an Italian does, he is watched by centuries 
agone, whose high honor it is his duty to sustain. 

There can be no doubt that ignorance tends to keep 
alive patriotism, at least patriotism of the intense, 
bigoted sort, which thinks there is but one civilized 
country in the world, and that all other lands are 
peopled by barbarians. The nations are separated by a 
difference of language, manners, and interests, and of 
location and history. The educated man surmounts 
many of these obstacles and grows to feel a sympathy 
for other nations. He sees whatever greatness there 
is in their character, and his prejudice against them 
disappears. He thus becomes somewhat of a cos¬ 
mopolite, a citizen of the world, and his love for his 
own country is called into active life only when there 
is real occasion for it. 

The love of home is an attachment of peculiar 
strength. The fact has already been noticed that 
Swiss soldiers in foreign service are rendered useless 
by homesickness, whenever they hear the familiar 
mountain airs, known as the “ Ranz des Vaches” 
played. Even beggars, the last persons one would 


LOVE OF HOME AND COUNTRY. 


2 $5 


think of as likely to become very much attached to 
their homes, have been known to die of homesickness. 

Iate. 

We now come to those affections which are the 
opposite of love, and which we have classed as hate. 
The principal modifications are jealousy, envy, and 
revenge. They all spring out of the principle of 
resentment. 

It has been thought by some that there is no such 
principle as resentment in our nature. I believe, how¬ 
ever, that its existence is generally conceded. Men, 
women, and children, in all conditions of society, from 
the most savage to the most refined, exhibit this feeling 
whenever they have received a real or fancied injury. 
The child betrays the presence of anger long before it 
becomes amenable to reason, and before it could have 
acquired it as an imitative habit, from seeing its work¬ 
ings in older people. Animals also seem to be subject 
to its laws. From these facts it certainly would seem 
that we possess this faculty of resentment, and that it 
was implanted in our bosoms by nature, that it is 
instinctive. The reason of its existence is quite easy 
to be seen. Without it, we should have no sufficient 
safeguard against the encroachments of selfish and 

o o 

designing men, and of that class popularly denominated 
“bullies.” And especially, were it not for this principle 
and sympathy working together, a weak man attacked 
by a strong one would find no protection among other 


1 


f 

286 THE AFFECTIONS. 

men. Reason would act too slowly in the former case r 
and cold, cautious prudence would probably forbid all 
interference in the latter. There is needed something' 
quicker and instinctive in its nature, which shall prompt 
us to action before reason can make up its mind, and 
in opposition, sometimes, to the dictates of selfish pru¬ 
dence. This we have in resentment, or indignation, 
with its varied forms. 

Though resentment is instinctive in its character, it 
is often brought under control of the will and the 
rational powers. To illustrate : suppose a man insults 
you, and you instantly and without any thought of the 
consequences, knock him down ; this is purely instinctive 
resentment. Suppose, however, that instead of striking 
him, you restrain your hand and go away, and there¬ 
after seek opportunities to- do him harm by slandering 
him, or destroying his property, or in any other way; 
this would be revenge, and would be a deliberate act, 
regulated by the rational powers, though it originated 
in an instinctive feeling. 


ENVY. 

Envy is a feeling which some people harbor toward 
their fellows who seem to be prospering better than 
they. It is an attribute of the lowest order of minds 
only. The great and noble are never troubled with 
the accursed feeling which begrudges their neighbor his 
good fortune. Jeremy Collier says: “ Envy is an ill- 
natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. 
It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the 


ENVY. 


287 


measure of happiness to be abated. It laments over 
prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health.” It is 
probably strongest when the envious and the envied 
belong to the same rank in society; but I do not 
believe, with some, that it is never exhibited under 
other circumstances. I think the spirit of communism, 
and the general restlessness which has so widely pre¬ 
vailed among the poorer classes for the past few years, 
are a very striking proof to the contrary. The street 
loafer who is too lazy to do anything for himself, thinks 
that the capitalist who, by industry and economy, has 
amassed a fortune, should be compelled to share it 
equally with him. A more envious and more superla¬ 
tively foolish and contemptible idea never entered the 
head of mortal man. 

JEALOUSY. 

Jealousy is akin to envy in its nature. It is 
generally an outgrowth of love between the sexes, and 
is simply envy of one who seemingly succeeds better 
than we in winning the affections of a person whom we 
ourselves love. It is not so base as ordinary envy, as 
there seems to be something about the love of men 
and women which makes it natural. It is often an 
accompaniment of the deepest and most passionately 
earnest love ; indeed, it is claimed by some philoso¬ 
phers that a person not of a naturally jealous tempera¬ 
ment, is incapable of true love. It is one of the most 
consuming passions — for it generally grows into a 
passion — to which the human race is liable. “ Green- 



283 


THE AFFECTIONS. 


eyed jealousy,” has been the abhorrence of poets and 
lovers in all ages. It probably causes more murders 
and suicides than any other two passions. 

REVENGE. 

The moral character of resentment has been the 
subject of considerable discussion. It has been, of 
course, generally agreed that deliberate resentment, 
such as envy, jealousy, and revenge, is morally bad, an 
unmitigated evil. On the other hand, it has been 
pretty generally held that immediate, instinctive resent¬ 
ment has no moral quality, good or bad. It is thought 
that it is involuntary, and hence can have nothing to 
do with goodness or badness. This I am disposed to 
admit with regard to the feeling itself in the abstract. 
But farther than this, I can scarcely go. It is in the 
power of the person of thorough moral cultivation to 
restrain the outward manifestations of this resentment; 
and, hence, to give way to impulse, and assault, or 
insult, or otherwise attack the offender, must have 
some moral quality. It will be generally conceded that 
the quality, if there be any, is bad. At the same time, 
that fault is evidently not nearly so culpable as deliber¬ 
ate revenge, because it is not so much an affair of the 
reason and Will—the responsible powers of mind. 


Ihe 


ESI RE has its origin in the absence, present 
or anticipated, of an object which we have 
in any way learned to love. The object of 
desire is generally, if not always, something 
the beauty or utility of which we have in 
some degree experienced. Our experience 
may have been quite limited, and may be 
supplemented by imagination, the report of 
others, and in various other ways, or it may have 
been complete in itself. The strength of the desire 
is proportioned to the affection we have formed for 
the object. 

The opposite of desire is aversion, and is acquired 
in the reverse way. We have learned to dislike an 
object which is absent, or whose absence we hope for. 
The word aversion is, however, used in a different 
sense from the present one — merely to denote dislike 
or hate for an object, either absent or present. 

As to the purpose of desire, John Locke says: 

/ 

“The uneasiness a man feels in himself upon the 
absence of anything, whose present enjoyment carries 
the idea of delight with it, is that we call desire; 
which is greater or less as that uneasiness is more or 

less vehement. Where, by-the-by, it may perhaps be 
19 289 











290 


THE DESIRES. 


of some use to remark, that the chief, if not the only 
spur to human industry and action, is uneasiness. For 
whatever good is proposed, if its absence carries no 
displeasure or pain with it, if a man be easy and con¬ 
tent without it, there is no desire of it, nor endeavor 
after it; there is no more but a bare velleity — the 
term used to signify the lowest degree of desire, and 
that which is next to none at all, when there is so 
little uneasiness in the absence of any thing that it 
carries a man no farther than some faint wishes for 
it, without any more effectual or vigorous steps being 
taken to attain it.” 

The desires are of two classes: those of the body, 
springing from the animal nature (sometimes called 
appetites), and those of the mind — in other words, the 
animal desires, and the rational desires. The position 
the desires hold in making up the Sensibilities, is 
shown in the analysis, on page 254, but another of 
the desires alone is here presented: 


Food. 


Animal. < 


Action. 

Sex. 


The Desires. < 


' Happiness. 
Knowledge. 
Power. 
Rational. < Money. 

Superiority. 



Society. 
w Esteem. 











ANIMAL DESIRES. 


29I 


JInimal Desires. 

The most important of the animal desires, and the 
designs of each, are these. The desire of food leads us 
to keep our system supplied with that which is so 
essential to its maintenance. By the desire for action, 
we are induced to take the necessary amount of physi¬ 
cal exercise. The desire for rest warns us not to over¬ 
task our powers of endurance. The sexual desire was 
bestowed upon us that we might not neglect to keep 
alive our species. These various desires are all wise 
provisions. Without them, we should often neglect the 
most vital interests of our nature. The rush of busi¬ 
ness, the love of money, and other things, would con¬ 
stantly operate to the injury of our health, even far 
more than they now do. It is foolish affectation, or 
at the very least, unwise for us to look down upon 
our physical desires in a spirit of scornful disgust. The 
mind cannot reach its full power unless it is supported 
by a good body, and even if it would, the body is in 
itself a most wonderful thing, worthy of all respect and 
admiration. 

But there is also a dark side to this matter, as to 
every other. The desires of the body are quite likely 
to grow into passions unless vigorously ruled by the 
mind; and a person governed by his animal passions 
is a sad spectacle indeed. His capacity for good is 
almost utterly destroyed. He occupies a plane much 
lower than that of the brutes, for they habitually 


292 


THE DESIRES. 


exercise moderation in all such things. Besides, in 
the words of another: “It seems to be the law 
of our nature, that while our active principles gain 
strength from exercise, the degree of enjoyment or 
suffering which they are capable of affording dimin¬ 
ishes by repetition.” This has been clearly stated by 
Mr. Stewart. It follows from this, that while by long 
and undue indulgence of any of the animal desires, 
the gratification originally derived from such indul¬ 
gence is no longer capable of being enjoyed, the 
desire itself may be greatly increased, and constantly 
increasing in its demands. It is hardly possible to 
conceive a condition more wretched and miserable 
than that of a mind compelled thus to drain the 
bitter dregs of its cup of pleasure, long since quaffed, 
and to repeat in endless round the follies that no 
longer have power to satisfy, even for the briefest 
moment, the poor victim of their enchantment. The 
drunkard, the glutton, the debauchee, afford illustra¬ 
tions of this principle. 



ATIONAL 



HAPPINESS. 


Of all the desires which grow out of our mental 
constitution, by far the most important and wide- 
reaching in its effects, is the desire of our own personal 
happiness, sometimes called self-love — a name, how¬ 
ever, which is liable to be misunderstood, because it 



RATIONAL DESIRES. 


2 93 


has been confounded with selfishness, and hence con¬ 
veys a meaning which does not belong to it in this 
instance. 

Much the larger part of all the actions, of whatever 
moral quality, which we perform in this world, are the 
results, either direct or indirect, of this principle. It 
has been thought by many that it is the foundation of 

all our actions, even those of charity and sympathy. 
As I .have had occasion to say elsewhere, I cannot sub¬ 
scribe to this opinion. I believe that considerations of 
self are by no means the only ones which exercise a 
motive influence upon the human mind ; and that we 
do a great many things from inspirations wholly gen¬ 
erous in their nature. 

Perhaps because of the confusion existing between 
the terms selfishness and self-love, some writers have 
held this principle to be a sinful one, and have taught 
the doctrine that all holiness required constant denial 
and mortification of self. But surely we were never 
created with desires and appetites, the moderate gratifi¬ 
cation of which, under proper circumstances, is wrong. 
Surely we were never put into this world with capabili¬ 
ties for happiness such as we possess, only to lure us 
into evil and the path to eternal punishment, as has 
been thought by some. Such an idea is, to my mind, 
absurd, if not blasphemous. Certainly it would over¬ 
turn the conception which most Christians have of 
their Creator — an all-powerful, all-wise, just, and mer¬ 
ciful God 

The desire for life and health is only one of the 


i 


294 THE desires. 

manifestations of this general desire. So are, perhaps, 
the desire of knowledge, the desire of power, with 
its resultant desires of money and superiority, the 
desire of society, etc. So numerous and important 
are the applications of some of these particular desires 
that we shall nevertheless treat of them under separate 
headings. 

DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE. 

One of the most beautiful, as well as one of the 
most useful, of our desires, is the desire of knowl¬ 
edge. It shows itself in the child in the form of 
round-eyed curiosity — a desire to comprehend all the 
new and strange which it sees about it. Later, it 
changes its form somewhat. It begins to flow in a 
narrower channel, but with a deeper and swifter cur¬ 
rent. Recognizing the impossibility of knowing every¬ 
thing, the man confines his attention mostly to certain 
branches of study, and in his chosen department he 
labors constantly for more and better knowledge. 
This desire, like all others, is more intense in some 
persons than in others, but probably it is not entirely 
absent in any. 

As it is, this desire for knowledge that has ulti¬ 
mately caused nearly all the great inventions, and the 
perhaps still more important discoveries of abstract 
principles, we cannot but regard as one of the high¬ 
est and most useful attributes of the human mind; 
one that will gradually unlock more and more of the 
secrets of nature, and make them tributary to man. 



DESIRE OF POWER. 


295 


DESIRE OF POWER. 

There are few things that have so great an influence 
upon a man’s life and character, and so upon the course 
of the world’s affairs, as the love of power and the desire 
to possess it. There is no one who does not feel it in 
one form or another. “I can ,” is probably the most 
exhilarating sentence in the English language. The 
child must feel a new and very pleasurable sensation 
when it first acquires the ability to walk. The lad that 
has learned to skate and handle his bat and ball well, 
feels considerably taller than he did before. The young 
student who can study out a page of Cicero in an hour, 
feels himself to be a king among men. And the man 
who can command the services of other men, and see • 
his opinions and desires become effective, derives there¬ 
from a stern, deep satisfaction. 

This principle of desire of power is more or less 
mingled with various other desires : as desire of knowl¬ 
edge, desire of liberty, desire of money, and desire of 
superiority; while it seems to be itself an offshoot of the 
general desire for happiness and well-being. It is par¬ 
tially the love of power that leads the scholar to toil at 
his books ; it buoys up the statesman, sick of the tur¬ 
moils of political life, and the disappointments and 
troubles that unavoidably surround every one who is 
working in any manner for the public ; it leads nations 
into war, and is the actuating principle of the armies 
that fight the battles of power. Everywhere we see 
the results of this thirst after power. Without it, the 


296 


THE DESIRES. 


world would be comparatively peaceful, but it would 
also be stale and lifeless in the extreme. 

DESIRE OF MONEY. 

“That influence over others which power implies,” 
writes one, “ and which is, to some extent, commanded 
by superiority of personal strength or prowess, by 
genius, by skill, by the various arts and address of 
life, or by the accident of birth and hereditary station, 
is still more directly and generally attainable, by 
another, and perhaps a shorter route — the possession 
of wealth. This, as the world goes, is the key that 
unlocks, the sceptre that controls all things. Personal 
prowess, genius, address, station, the throne itself, are, 
in no inconsiderable degree, dependent upon money, 
and its command. He who has this can well afford to 
dispense with most other goods and gifts of fortune; 
so far, at least, as concerns the possession of power. 
He may be neither great, nor learned, nor of noble 
birth ; neither elegant in person nor accomplished in 
manners, distinguished neither for science, nor virtue ; 
he may command no armies, he may sit upon no 
throne; yet with all his deficiencies, and even his vices, 
if so he have wealth, he has power. Unnumbered 
hands are ready to task their skill at his bidding, 
unnumbered arms to move and toil and strive in his 
service, unnumbered feet hasten to and fro on his 
errands. He commands the skill and labor of multi¬ 
tudes whom he has never seen, and who know him not. 
In distant quarters of the globe, the natives of other 



DESIRE OF MONEY. 


297 


zones and climes hasten upon his errands; swift ships 
traverse the seas for him; the furs of the extreme 
north, the rich woods and spices of the tropics, the 
silks of India, the pearls and gems of the east — what¬ 
ever is costly, curious, and rare, whatever can contribute 
to the luxury and pride of man — these are his, and for 
him. No wonder that he who desires power, should 
desire that which is one of the chief avenues and means 
to the attainment of power, and that what is valued, at 
first, rather as an instrument than as an end, should 
presently come to be regarded and valued for its own 
sake.” 

A properly regulated love — or respect, rather—of 
money is a very useful and admirable trait. The lack 
of it leads a great many people into disagreeable posi¬ 
tions at times. It is the cause of half the pauperism 
and wretched poverty of the world; it is usually the 
cause of a family’s getting into what is termed 
“straitened circumstances.” There is no one, pos¬ 
sessed of good health and good sense, who may not, 
if he will, soon place himself where want, under 
ordinary circumstances, cannot reach him. A failure 
to do this usually springs from either laziness or 
improvidence, though it sometimes has more honor¬ 
able causes. Only a few evenings ago I overheard a 
young man, pretty well advanced toward intoxication, 
talking about a fellow-workman, for whom he evidently 
entertained some dislike. Said he, “ I get fifty dollars 
a month, and he gets only forty-five dollars. I hardly 
ever’have money enough to pay my board; he always 




298 


THE DESIRES. 


has money on hand. It would almost kill him to lose 
a nickel.” Then he and his companion in drink 
heartily agreed that they “ had no use for such a 
fellow.” Probably not — but “such a fellow” may 
possibly have use for them ten years hence, when he 
is proprietor of a large business establishment, and 
they are still workmen for wages. But there is danger 
that the money-lover may degenerate into the miser. 
Love of money is one of the most absorbing of all the 
passions. The man who gets thoroughly in love with 
gold rarely stops until he reaches the point where he 
loves nothing else; it becomes the one aim of his life 
to heap useless dollars upon dollars — useless because 
he will not and cannot use them; and a man of that 
kind is truly a subject for pity. 

A remarkable feature of the passion for money, 
is that it keeps growing stronger and stronger in old 
age, after other passions have perished. To use the 
words of Dr. Brown : “ In the contemplation of many 
of the passions that rage in the heart with greatest 
fierceness, there is some comfort in the thought that, 
violent as they may be for a time, they are not to rage 
through the whole course of life, at least if life be pro¬ 
longed to old age ; that the agitation which at every 
period will have some intermissions, will grow gradually 
less as the body grows more weak, and that the mind 
will at least derive from this very feebleness a repose 
which it could not enjoy when the vigor of the bodily 
frame seemed to give to the passion a corresponding 
vigor. It is not in avarice, however, that this soothing 




DESIRE OF MONEY. 


2 99 


influence of age is to be found. It grows with our 
growth and with our strength; but it strengthens also 
with our very weakness. There are no intermissions 
in the anxieties which it keeps awake ; and every year, 
instead of lessening its hold, seems to fix it more 
deeply within the soul itself, as the bodily covering 
around it slowly moulders away. * * * The heart 

which is weary of everything else, is not weary of covet¬ 
ing more gold ; the memory which has forgotten every 
thing else, continues still, as Cato says, in Cicero’s 
dialogue, to remember where its gold is stored ; the eye 
is not dim to gold that is dim to everything beside; the 
hand which it seems an effort to stretch out and fix 
upon anything, appears to gather new strength from 
the very touch of the gold which it grasps, and has 
still vigor enough to lift once more, and count once 
more, though a little more slowly, the money that has 
been its happiest occupation to lift and count for a 
period of years far longer than the ordinary life of man. 
When the relations, or other expectant heirs gather 
around his couch, not to comfort, nor even to seem to 
comfort, but to await, in decent mimicry of solemn 
attendance, that moment which they rejoice to view 
approaching; the dying eye can still send a jealous 
glance to the coffer near which it trembles to see, 

o 

though it scarcely sees, so many human forms assem¬ 
bled ; and that feeling of jealous agony, which follows 
and outlasts the obscure vision of floating forms that 
are scarcely remembered, is at once the last misery and 
the last feeling of life.” 


300 


THE DESIRES. 


AMBITION, OR DESIRE OF SUPERIORITY. 

Scarcely an individual anywhere, is wholly devoid 
of desire to excel his fellows. The school-boy, in 
the class-room and upon the play-ground, is actuated 
by this impulse. The business man tries to lead his 
neighbor in the amount of his yearly business; each 
preacher wants the largest congregation; each lawyer 
or doctor, the largest practice; nations are moved by 
this desire, and by the tricks of diplomacy, or the force 
of arms, try to outstrip their rivals in the race for 
power. Even among the brutes, the same principle 
is constantly working. 

There has been a tendency to regard ambition as 
an evil part of human nature. It is true that ambi¬ 
tion often becomes inordinate, and passes its true 
limits, when, of course, it exercises a harmful influ¬ 
ence. But in that it only does what all other prin¬ 
ciples in our nature do. Excessive greed for money 
is an unmitigated evil; so is an excessive appetite 
for food, for almost anything, indeed. But the fact 
that an excess of anything is bad, does not lessen 
its value when held in moderation. Nor is ambition 
always and necessarily associated with envy, though 
certainly it is very often found mixed with that base 
alloy. Envy grudges a rival his success, and wishes 
to pull him down to its own level. Ambition grants 
him his success, and is glad he has it, but wishes to 
equal or surpass it. “ Emulation is a good thing,” 
says Aristotle, “and belongs to good men; envy is 


AMBITION, OR DESIRE OF SUPERIORITY. 301 

bad, and belongs to bad men. What a man is emulous 
of he strives to attain, that he may really possess the 
desired object; the envious are satisfied if nobody 
has it.” 

Valuable as the incentives of ambition are to the 
human race, it must be kept within due bounds. When 
allowed to dominate, there is no passion which can do 
so enormous an amount of evil in the world. The 
unbridled ambition of great military chieftains has more 
than once deluged the earth with blood. It is no 
uncommon thing for the personal ambition of a sover¬ 
eign to bring on a terrible war. The ambition of our 
great money kings crushes hundreds of less powerful 
men, and drives many of them in despondency to strong 

drink, and even to suicide. There is danger that 

\ 

envy and ill-will toward those whom we regard as rivals 
and competitors with us, for those honors and rewards 
which lie in our path, shall be permitted to mingle with 
the desire to excel. Indeed, so frequently are the two 
conjoined, that to the reflecting and sensitive mind, 
superiority itself almost ceases to be desirable, since it 
is but too likely to be purchased at the price of the 
good-will, and kind feeling, of those less fortunate, 
or less gifted, than ourselves. 

DESIRE OF SOCIETY. 

At an early period in the life of an infant, the desire 
for society manifests itself. The little child of a year 
will cry for companionship; and it never loses its desire 
for any length of time. The animals also, as a rule, 


302 


THE DESIRES. 


are fond of the society of their own species. Most 
wild animals, as bison, antelopes, and horses, habitually 
live in herds; so with birds. In man, the feeling is 
usually a very strong one, as the following anecdotes 
will show. 

During the reign of Louis XIV., a French noble¬ 
man was kept in close confinement in the castle of 
Piguerol for several years. In his solitude he amused 
himself by watching the movements of a spider which 
had made its home in his cell; and became so much 
attached to it that his grief was of the deepest and 
sincerest character when the keeper, discovering his 
amusement, killed the spider. Baron Trench sought 
to alleviate the wretchedness of his long imprisonment 
by cultivating the acquaintance or friendship of a 
mouse, which in turn manifested a strong attachment 
to him, played about his person, and took its food from 
his hand. The fact having been discovered by the 
officers, the mouse was removed to the guardroom, but 
managed to find its way back to the prison door, and, 
at the hour of visitation, when the door was opened, 
ran into the dungeon, and manifested the greatest 
delight at finding its master. Being subsequently 
removed and placed in a cage, it pined, refused all sus¬ 
tenance, and in a few days died. Rev. Henry C. Trum¬ 
bull having preached a kind and sympathetic sermon 
to the convicts in a prison, was afterward sent for by 
one of the prisoners, who asked: “ Did you mean what 
you said about sympathizing with us ? ” Being answered 
in the affirmative, the prisoner continued. “ I am here 


DESIRE OF SOCIETY. 


303 


for life, but I can stay more contentedly, now, that I 
know I have a brother out in the world.” It is said that 
the man’s subsequent behavior was so good that he was 
pardoned, and that he died during the civil war, thank¬ 
ing God to the last for the kind sympathy of the minis¬ 
ter. Silvio Pellico, the Italian poet, who was kept for 
ten years a political prisoner by the Austrians, when 
forbidden to converse with his fellow-prisoner, gave 
this stirring answer, which shows how strong the desire 
for society was with him: “I shall do no such thing! 
I shall speak as long as I have breath, and invite my 
neighbor to talk to me. If he refuse, I will talk to my 
window bars. I will talk to the hills before me. I will 
talk to the birds as they fly about. I will talk ! ” He 
relieved the tedium of his imprisonment in a manner 
similar to that employed by the French nobleman 
mentioned above. 

Some years ago, the state of New York tried the 
experiment of solitary confinement. The result is thus 
given by Messrs. Beaumont and Tocqueville, appointed 
commissioners by the French government to examine 
the American system of prison discipline: “This trial, 
from which so happy a result had been anticipated, 
was fatal to the greater part of the convicts ; in order 
to reform them, they had been subjected to complete 
isolation ; but this absolute solitude, if nothing inter¬ 
rupts it, is beyond the strength of man; it destroys 
the criminal without intermission and without pity; it 
does not reform, it kills. The unfortunates on whom 
this experiment was made, fell into a state of depres- 


304 


THE DESIRES. 


sion so manifest that their keepers were struck with it; 
their lives seemed in danger if they remained longer 
in this situation ; five of them had already succumbed 
during a single year; their moral state was no less 
alarming; one of them had become insane, another, in 
a fit of despair, had embraced the opportunity, when 
the keeper brought him something, to precipitate him¬ 
self from his cell, running the almost certain chance of 
a mortal fall.” 

Byron’s “ Prisoner of Chillon,” a poem based on the 
sad story of Francois de Bonivard and his brothers, 
in the Castle of Chillon, Switzerland, is a splendidly 
terrible picture of the horrors of close confinement. 
I cannot forbear quoting from it, commencing after 
the death of his last brother: 

What next befell me then and there 
I know not well — I never knew — 

First came the loss of light, and air, 

And then of darkness, too: 

I had no thought, no feeling — none; 

Among the stones I stood a stone, ✓ 

And was, scarce conscious whaq I wist, 

As shrubless crags within the mist; 

For all was blank, and bleak, and gray, 

It was not night — it was not day; 

It was not e’en the dungeon light, 

So hateful to my heavy sight; 

But vacancy, absorbing space, 

And fixedness — without a place. 

There were no stars, no earth, no time, 

No check, no change, no good, no crime, 

But silence, and a stirless breath 
Which neither was of life nor death; 

A sea of stagnant idleness, 

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless. 


DESIRE OF ESTEEM. 


305 


1 


DESIRE OF ESTEEM. 

This is another of the original impulses of our 
nature which is both powerful and universal in its 
effects. The little child, after performing some of its 
acquired tricks, will look up for a smile and an encour¬ 
aging word, and if it does not receive them it will turn 
away in evident disappointment. The same principle 
rules in later years; the strong man is anxious that 
what he does should meet the approval of all about 
him. We are happy when we feel that we have the 
respect and admiration of the world, doubly so if we 
possess its affection at the same time. This is one of 
the elements of ambition. We desire not power, but 
fame as well. There are a few who would prefer to be 
4t the power behind the throne,” working in secret, or at 
most, only in a sort of semi-publicity. A far greater 
number would like to occupy the throne and have the 
power also ; they desire the ability to do, but they are 
equally anxious to get full credit for all their doings. 
There is also a goodly number of those who would be 
perfectly content to fill the throne, and give to some 
one else the power and the care that goes with it. 
They are satisfied if they can be in the public eye, the 
observed of all observers, even though they may be in 
reality only puppets pulled with wires by some one 
behind them. 

One of the most remarkable features of the desire 
of esteem, and one which gives those philosophers who 

trace all our feelings and actions to the principle of 
20 


THE DESIRES. 


306 

rational selfishness a great deal of trouble, is the fact 
that we desire the esteem and admiring remembrance 
of those who shall come after us—“the ages yet 
unborn.” Apparently there is no way of reducing this 
particular desire to such an origin. For of what pos¬ 
sible material advantage could a reputation among 

» , 

people who live after we are long dead, be to us ? The 
plaudits or the curses of a whole world will not depress 
either side of the scale wherein our good and evil 
deeds shall be balanced, so much as the fraction of a 
hair. The din of applause or denunciation which may 
ascend from earth, cannot reach the ears of that judge 
who sits aloft and reads at a glance into the depths of 
our hearts. 

Many have decried fame as “a sad oppression 
to be borne with pain;” “a fancied life in others’ 
breath”; “a flutt’ring, noisy sound — the cold lie of 
universal vogue; ” the filling of “ a certain portion of 
uncertain paper.” All these, and many more equally 
pleasant epithets, have been applied to fame by writers 
who themselves wrote for it — like a man who dis¬ 
parages the article he is about to buy. Much nearer 
the mark are these lines from Mallet: 

1 

“I courted fame but as a spur to brave 
And honest deeds ; and who despises fame 
Will soon renounce the virtues that deserve it.” 

Another somewhat strange thing about the love of 
esteem is that we desire the esteem of our enemies, 
and those whose judgment we consider to be of little 





DESIRE OF ESTEEM. 


307 


account, men whom we despise, indeed. Moreover, it 
pains us to fail of receiving the approbation of the 
world, even when we are thoroughly convinced of 
the righteousness of the course we are pursuing; 
even then it is hard for us to stand up boldly and 
defy public sentiment. 

The desire for approbation is not at all unworthy 
of the greatest and noblest minds. In the words of 
Moore : 

“ Who that surveys this span of earth we press, 

This speck of life in Time’s great wilderness, 

This narrow isthmus ’twixt two boundless seas, 

The past, the future — two eternities! — 

Would sully the bright spot, or leave it bare, 

When he might build him a proud temple there; 

A name that long shall hallow all its space, 

And be each purer soul’s high resting place?” 

It is right and honorable, then, that we should strive 
to gain the good opinion both of the contemporary 
world and of that which shall yet be. 

But this, like everything else, has its limits. It is 
not right to work for public favor by dishonest and 
disreputable means. There are times, too, when public 
opinion is, as we see things, wrong. In such cases, it 
would be both criminal and disgraceful for us to sac¬ 
rifice a cause which we believed to be just and right in 
order that we might gain in the estimation of mistaken 
people. It would have been wrong for the great 
religious reformers to have yielded to the tumult that 
surrounded them. It was wrong in the thousands who 


THE DESIRES. 


308 

did yield. Carlyle and Wordsworth would have done 
wrong, and have been unworthy the respect /now 
accorded them, had they sacrificed what they respect¬ 
ively believed to be truth and art to the clamor that 
assailed each of them when they published their novel 
opinions and methods of writing. The public is not 
always right, and when we think it wrong on important 
matters, we ought to be able to throw it aside and 
follow our own convictions. This is always the part 
of true manhood; moreover, it is a line of conduct 
that will always win respect in the end, while currying 
favor with the world at the expense of our own honest 
beliefs is a procedure which has always been held in 
just contempt. 



Hope and fear differ from desire and aversion, only 
in having the added element of probability. We hope 
for anything which we wish, and which we have some 
probability of getting. We fear anything for which we 
entertain a dislike, and which may probably be inflicted 
upon us. 

The strength of our hope and fear is proportioned 
to two things: the probability and the desire, or the 
probability and the aversion, as the case may be. A 
thing for which we entertain a moderate desire or aver¬ 
sion, and of which there is a strong probability, will be 
much hoped for or feared. A thing for which our 
desire or aversion is strongly marked, and of which 


HOPE AND FEAR. 


309 


there is little probability, will also create within us a 
high degree of hope or fear. Dr. Brown illustrates 
this principle by the case of a traveler: “ There can be 
no question,” says he, “that he who travels in the same 
carriage, with the same external appearances of every 
kind by which a robber could be tempted or terrified, 
will be in equal danger of attack, whether he carry with 
him little of which he can be plundered, or such a treas¬ 
ure as would impoverish him if it were lost. But there 
can be no question, also, though the probabilities of 
danger be the same, the fear of attack would, in these 
two cases, be very different; that, in the one case, he 
would laugh at the ridiculous terror of any one who 
journeyed with him, and expressed much alarm at the 
approach of evening; and that, in the other case, his 
own eye would watch suspiciously every horseman who 
approached, and would feel a sort of relief when he 
observed him pass carelessly and quietly along, at a 
considerable distance behind.” This tendency of the 
imagination to exaggerate the real, and conjure up a 
thousand unreal dangers, when anything of peculiar 
value is in possession, which it is certainly possible, and 
it may be slightly probable, that we may lose, may, 
perhaps, account for the uneasiness, amounting often 
to extreme anxiety, that frequently accompanies the 
sudden acquisition of wealth. The cobbler, at his last, 
is a merry man, whistling at his work, from morning 
until night. Bequeath him a fortune, and he quits at 
once his last and his music ; he is no longer the light¬ 
hearted man that he was; his step is cautious, his look 


3io 


THE DESIRES. 


anxious and suspicious ; he grows care-worn and old. 
He that never was so happy in his life as when a poor 
man, now dreads nothing so much as poverty. While 
he was poor, there was nothing to fear, but everything 
to hope, from the future; now that he is rich, there is 
nothing further to hope, but much to fear, since if the 
future brings any change in his condition, as it is not 
unlikely to do, it will, in all probability, be a change, 
not from wealth to still greater wealth, but from his 
present affluence to his former penury. 

* 

Where is the troubled heart consign’d to share 
Tumultuous toils, or solitary care, 

Unblest by visionary thoughts that stray 
To count the joys of fortune’s better day! 

Thus exclaims Thomas Campbell, in his beautiful 
poem on “The Pleasures of Hope.” Man has no 
better or more faithful friend than Hope. After all 
others have forsaken him, she still remains, cheering 
his lonesome hours with stories of the joys that may 
yet be his. In the beautiful words of Schiller: 

’Tis hope first shows him the light of day, 

Through infancy hovers before Him, 

Enchants him in youth with her magic ray, 

Survives, when the grave closes o’er him; 

For when in the tomb ends his weary race, 

E’en there still see we her smiling face! 

Indeed the pleasures of hope are greater than those 
of reality. Hope paints us joys unalloyed by any 
dross. No care and trouble is connected with the 


HOPE AND FEAR. 


3 1 1 

wealth and power that is ours in hope; all is pleasure 


unmixed with pain, adorned 



colors 


on fancy’s palette. 

At summer eve, when heaven’s ethereal bow 
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below, 
Why to yon mountains, turns the musing eye, 
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky? 
Why do those cliffs of shadowy tint appear 
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near? 
’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, 

And robes the mountain in its azure hue. 

Thus, with delight, we linger to survey 
The promised joys of life’s unmeasured way; 
Thus from afar, each dim discovered scene 
More pleasing seems than all the past hath been, 
And every form, that fancy can repair 
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there. 







©BSERVATIORS. 


HE most striking feature of note seen in 
the study of the Sensibilities, is that at 
almost every point they may possibly antag¬ 
onize each other. The human being may 
find himself placed where, for instance, to 
gratify his desire for money he must sacri¬ 
fice his love for his friends, or some other 
affection even more dear; or where, to pre¬ 
serve his sense of self-approval, and avoid 
the pain of disapproval, he must sacrifice 
some strong desire; or, to obtain and hold 
the esteem of his fellow beings, many other 
of the desires, the affections, or the emo¬ 
tions, must be held in check, or denied 
entirely. Here, then, the “irrepressible conflict” is 
forever going on; here is the battle-field where the 
warring angels of good and evil are forever struggling. 
Why good, and why evil ? Because man’s nature, 
besides including all there is in nature below him, 
has some higher qualities added. The law of nature 
is that of progress, always from lower to higher. 

Man, in order to keep this law, must use the lower 

% 

side of his nature for the continued elevation of his 

higher qualities. To keep this grand law of nature, 

812 






























OBSERVATIONS. 


3 1 3 


and not to break it, to be guided by his higher, 
nobler side, is good ; to be moved by his lower, his 
animal side alone, to break that universal law, is 
evil. These feelings from both sides of his nature 
are, by necessity, always present and intermingling. 
In plain sight of these clear-cut facts, it seems 
scarcely necessary to urge each person to a constant 
and careful study of his own feelings. Certainly, no 
one would fix his eyes upon the clouds and walk in 
dangerous places, near pitfalls, trenches and preci¬ 
pices, never- looking to his feet. But a moment’s 
survey of the multitudes in every-day life will con¬ 
vince any one that this is just what a good many 
people are doing. It is not the business of this 
hour to preach sermons, however. Nothing could 
be further from our intent. Let us examine Nature, 
her laws, her conditions, her final results, and find in 
the discovery of facts and the pursuit of truth, another 
mission. It is the privilege of every human being to 
see and understand that in the Sensibilities, as above 
fully enumerated, is found the motive, the origin of 
every Willed or chosen action of his life, or of every 
refusal to act. 

The first acts of the child are largely the results 
of instinctive feelings, or inherited tendencies. The 
little girl nurses her doll, because she so desires. 
Sunbeams kiss her golden tresses, a look of Heaven 
is on her face, and maternity is in her heart. The 
boy, though just beginning to walk, will instantly 
throw aside that ape of a baby, the doll, harness his 


314 the sensibilities. 

dog to a wagon, and haul sticks about the place. He 
builds a stable for his dog, and ties him in the stall 
as though he was a real horse. The yard gate is left 
open only once, he darts out, and is gone. Up the 
street he toddles, amid men and danger. He is ready 
to ride a horse, buy a calf, or run a locomotive. He 
loves to throw snowballs, and stones, and forgets his 
dinner when a contest is on hand. Such are his likes 
and dislikes. 

A little later the young lady notices lights and 
shadows. She always knows the color of your eye 
and the cut of your coat; she can tell the width and 
hue of every ribbon which has graced female beauty 
in her neighborhood for years past. She paints, 
sings, sympathizes. Her form, face and heart ask for 
sympathy in return. She longs for some one whom 
she can respect and whom she can give a wealth of 
affection, more like heaven than earth. The recipient 
of this may be the veriest scoundrel on the green sod. 
She knows it not, nor can she easily be convinced of 
this fact; he leads her anywhere, and there she dwells, 
wrapped in adoration of him. Should he rise to the 
skies on wings of fame and moral worth she goes not 
with him unless her feelings attend the course. Is 
he an outcast? He may also be faithless and cruel, 
yet his stopping place is her home, while she loves 
him. She has not the power to tell these deeds 
to others, and they are viewed through glasses of 
affection. 

The young man leaves home with an exact image 


OBSERVATIONS. 


315 

of mother in his heart. No — not an image! Vastly 
more ! She walks alive in the halls of his soul. She 
may pass away to other worlds, but she is not gone. 
He may raise the liquor glass, but mothers eye 
rebukes. He walks the dens of vice — mother looks 
on and weeps. Oh, what a guardian angel is mother! 
How hard to be wicked, for mother wants him to be 
good! He is impelled to the right because he feels it 
to be right and desires to please mother. If he toils 
from dawn till night, some sort of feeling is the motor. 
Either he hungered, he was cold, or he loved a nice 
home, happy children and a wife well dressed. He 
loved position in society, and chief seats in the syna¬ 
gogues. He dreaded the pinchings of poverty and the 
contempt of his fellow men, and ennui struck its fangs 
into every part of his being — all these — or at least 
some of them, impelled him to work. Ah, what a 
blending of varied feelings do we see! Come they all 
from the nobler side ? 

It has been said that “ Knowledge is power.” 
Knowledge is power, indeed, but it is passive power. 
Knowledge alone never took Sherman from the shoe- 
maker’s bench and gave him a seat in Congress. 
Knowledge is but light for the track — feeling darts the 
train! 

Every phase of Sensibility should be studied for 

THE PART IT PLAYS IN BUSINESS. 

All the most powerful doers in the world have been 
also the most powerful feelers. Sensibility is the fire 







3 1 6 THE SENSIBILITIES. 

under the boiler. Without it, there can be no steam, 
no motion. Every act, from the poet’s dreamy crea¬ 
tion, to the steady labor of the mechanic at his anvil, 
or the farmer at his plow, must be lit up with the warm 
glow of emotions, affections, desires. 

One of the greatest literary men of modern times 
said that when he was about sixteen, and was already a 
writer of short articles for the press, he found the fol¬ 
lowing paragraph in a scrap of an old journal: “If you 
would be a successful writer, cultivate your feelings. 
Study the whole range of human emotions, affections, 
desires, and become familiar with their endless combi¬ 
nations. The place to study them is in the written 
lives of men and women, in the lives of your friends 
and associates, but first of all, and most of all, in your 
own heart. True, if you would speak for others to 
listen, you must have something to say; you must have 
a large and varied information, a vast store of useful 
facts. But these alone will be cold and useless for 
your purpose unless warmed into life and thrilled into 
separate realities by a wide, deep, and far-reaching sym¬ 
pathy. Your skeleton of facts must be clothed with 
human flesh, it must breathe and live.” He cut the 
paragraph out and pasted it into his pocket-book and 
years afterward, when he fully understood its vast 
scope, he treasured the little clipping all the more for 
its truth and wisdom. 

The laborer cleans the street honestly and faithfully, 
because he has a heart in the right place. Without the 
same feelings that are needed to ennoble a king, he will 


OBSERVATIONS. 


317 


be either a villain, a dunce, or a slave. But give him 
the feelings that move the lives of all the true, and his 
tasks fall from his hands in cheerful and earnest com¬ 
pleteness, and he becomes the peer of every man who 
has a heart. 

THE INNER LIFE. 

The outward lives of men come alwavs from the 
springs within; the Sensibilities are, then, the most 
absorbing study, because a knowledge of them is the 
key to the inner life of every one. 

The Intellect is constantly perceiving things, and to 
whatever extent these things excite man’s emotions, 
his affections, his desires, to that extent may he act. 
He may act hastily, impulsively, we say, taking what 
seems to be the nearest road to the fruition of his feel¬ 
ings, after the manner of brutes; or he may wait for 
more intellectual light, for a study of all departments 
of his feelings, for a wise decision upon the worthiness 
of that feeling to be a motive. When we see so many 
people doing things merely because they feel like doing 
them, acting upon impulse, without waiting to examine 
the wisdom of their proposed action, we are not sur¬ 
prised at the abuse that is heaped upon such people; 
or that they are used by wiser heads as mere blind 
tools to accomplish any end their leaders choose. They 
are sometimes led on to noble ends, but too often they 
are but cat’s paws to pull chestnuts out of the burning 
ashes for others. How many a lawyer has won a hard 
case by simply playing upon the chords of Sensibility 


3 I 8 THE SENSIBILITIES. 

in the minds of his jurymen. First a little cordial to 
please their self-approval, their love of esteem, then he 
presents the feelings of his client, stripped of everyT 
thing base, that the jurymen may easily feel as his 
client felt; then rapidly the scale is run, every pulsing 
sentiment is made to throb in sympathy with that 
client, every circumstance is managed to call forth their 
pity for him, every noble impulse in the common heart 
of humanity to aid a fellow-mortal in any sort of dan¬ 
ger is called out, and amid a torrent of feeling from 
the well-springs of Sensibility, the jury give their ver¬ 
dict in favor of a case that would not, could not, stand 
one moment in the clear light of an intellectual, a sen¬ 
sible examination. In the same way the vile-hearted 
libertine wins possession of his victim, and in like 
manner does the advocate of every false cause gain 
his followers. Every natural feeling is good in its 
place, but what is its true place or extent ? That is 
the question. The desire for money, fame, power— 
how shall we decide the proper limits of these? Many 
a man of brain and thought has stumbled upon that 
question, because of the popular opinion that the more 
money, fame and power we can have, the better. It 
was to such desires as these that the slimy villain, 
Aaron Burr, appealed when he needed aid in his 
schemes ; and the wealthy scholar, Blennerhassett, turn¬ 
ing from the quiet joys of his books, his farm, and 
his virtuous family, to gaze- on pictures of future fame 
and glory was led on to ruin and disgrace. 

What a medley of contradictions are the motives 



OBSERVATIONS. 


319 


of men ! The thief and the saint are both moved by 
the same Sensibility, their feelings. Startling thought! 
From the same range of possibilities may come the 
tenderest act of a faithful friend, or the foulest crime 
of a blackened murderer. Where does the difference 
arise ? 

THE ANSWER. 

The answer has been already hinted. All the desires 
classed as animal desires in the analysis of the Sensi¬ 
bilities, man holds in common with other animals. 
These are necessary to the safety and welfare of his 
body and the continuance of the race. Further than 
this, these desires dare not lead. You may eat to live, 
but never live for the sake of eating. So with the 
other feelings in this section. (See analysis of the 
desires, page 290.) 

Another point: Man’s nature makes him a social 
being. His love of kindred, his love of friends, of 
country, of society, of the good will and esteem of 
others, all point to the plain fact that man’s nature will 
suffer, and suffer severely, if he attempt to live wholly 
apart from all his kind, or array himself in selfishness 
against his fellow creatures. No human being, how¬ 
ever perfect, can go on very long without the sincere 
and true regard of some worthy person. There will 
come moments when an unsatisfied hunger for love and 
sympathy will almost drive him mad. Sympathy is the 
central bond of humanity, and when any individual 
devotes too large a share of his efforts to the pursuit of 


320 


THE SENSIBITITIES. 


his private good alone, or tries to rise upon the down¬ 
fall or misfortune of others, he cuts the very rope that 
anchors his ship in safety. 

And finally, the law of progress and improvement, 
the most powerful, deep, and universal law of Nature, 
stands forever ready at the hand of every thinking 
person as a measure of the worthiness of his motives. 
Nature never made a law to be broken, nor excused an 
individual for negligence in understanding her laws. 

ESTEEM AND SELF-APPROVAL. 

The most powerful impulses in leading men to just 
and proper actions are those of self-approval or disap¬ 
proval, and the desire for the esteem or good-will of 
other people. The desire for the esteem of others is 
almost omnipotent. It is not to be believed that any 
mortal ever lived who was so far gone in utter reck¬ 
lessness as to fully, completely and truly say, “ I don’t 
care what others think of me.” The person who 
moves toward such a state of mind is treading on the 
brink of moral ruin. Yet this very desire for the 
esteem of others, restraining and beneficial as it surely 
is, may become our worst enemy. When careless, 
unwise, mistaken, foolish, or vicious persons are the 
associates whose good-will we court, the danger of our 
position is easily seen, for it is impossible to avoid 
doing some things to please them and hold their 
friendship. There is no safety in the esteem of 

others unless we choose to devote ourselves wholly 

< 

toward winning it from the wise, the virtuous and the 


OBSERVATIONS. 


3 21 


true. Our friends must be chosen from among the 
good, those about whose goodness there is no shade 
of doubt, or this very feeling, given to elevate and 
ennoble us, will but drag us down, and down. How 
true is that saying: “What a person loves, that will 
he become,” and this law of human nature explains it. 

No anguish of spirit on earth can equal that of the 
being who feels that all the world is frowning on him. 
As of the dog in the proverb, you may say, “ Give him 
a bad name, and then hang him,” for he is ready for 
any deed; he has no reputation to save. He will 
barter his soul for a pitying glance of sympathy from 
the veriest villain, and follow the approving smiles 1 
of his newly found friend, though it lead to a bottom¬ 
less pit. Need we look further for the proof of that 
rough old saying: “ There is no rage like love to hatred 
turned ” ? 

Here is one of the many practical lessons to be 
learned from these truths. Though we dare not asso¬ 
ciate with evil or vicious persons, yet our dearest 
companions will of course be more or less imperfect; 
and while we study them closely that we be not led 
into their faults, it is most unwise to openly notice 
their errors, or to often chide them. They, knowing 
that we dwell upon their weaknesses, feel that our 
respect for them is lessened ; and soon they lose to 
that extent their desire of laboring to please or gratify 
us, or to merit the esteem they feel is already lost. 
Thus are we the losers by what is also a great unkind¬ 
ness to them. How much wiser, by our own pure 
21 


322 


THE SENSIBILITIES. 


lives and their regard for us and good-will, to lead 
them unconsciously away from evil. Thus appears 
the deep meaning of the sage when he says: “A 
good example is better than precept ”; like charity, 
it blesses both giver and receiver. 

When we do that of which our own understand¬ 
ings approve, we can scarcely know a sweeter reward 
than that same feeling of self-approval; but instead, 
when an act is condemned by our better sense, we 
cannot escape the company of our own minds, and 
the frown of sharp rebuke is ever present. These 
remorseful feeling are the echoes of lost virtues. 
Not even for an hour can we bear to be alone, 
nor can we advantageously apply our leisure time; 
we try like fugitives and wanderers to escape from 
ourselves; but the gloomy companion presses on, 
and pursues us as we fly. No man can long re¬ 
main knowingly guilty to himself; and there is no 
man that carries guilt about him, without receiving 
a sting into his soul. He may suffer at the thought 
of an evil act he contemplates doing, and his efforts 
to free himself from this painful disapproval of an 
act already done, or about to be done, gives rise to 
one of the most peculiar traits in the human char¬ 
acter, namely, that of self-deception. 

SELF-DECEPTION. 

When a man harbors an impulse he feels to be an 
unworthy one, he must either suffer the pain of his 
own disapproval or quiet his mind temporarily with 


OBSERVATIONS. 


3 2 3 


some excuse. Many try to drown their memories in 
vice, or a round of exciting scenes ; while many more 
plead their own cases before the court of their accusing 
minds, and where the same person is both pleader and 
judge, a fair judgment is too seldom obtained. Thus, 
while one person is being deceived by others, scores 
upon scores deceive themselves. One quiets his 
doubts by saying, “ I was abundantly provoked to do 
what I did”; another, “ I was not well informed, I was 
ignorant and am not to blame for what I did ” ; another* 
“ Oh, it is a very small matter, it don’t amount to much 
in a lifetime”; another, “ Hundreds of people do the 
same, and worse ” ; another, “ I can’t afford to waste 
time thinking of the past, I must be jolly to-day, for 
to-morrow I may die.” The most common and danger¬ 
ous excuse is found behind the fact that all the feelings 
in the range of Sensibility are right and good under 
some circumstances ; the mistake is made in the extent 
of their indulgence. Many a man has a kind of 
kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his 
own little acts and wishes, and they fall into pretty 
combinations, and delight him, often very mischiev¬ 
ously and to his final serious injury; but they are to 
him a pleasure for the moment. It is easy for a hasty 

person to believe that his motives are pure and noble, 

* * 

or for the closer thinker to persuade himself for a time 
that his course is proper and right. But it is our privi¬ 
lege to know that every broken law must suffer its 
penalty, that those who delay the judgment are but 
adding to their own pain, and that sooner or later 


3 2 4 


THE SENSIBILITIES. 


regrets must overtake each and every error. A wrong 
act cannot be long forgotten in excuses. It must be 
righted, or the memory of it can be buried in no other 
way but in the excitement of committing greater 
wrongs. Hence, we see beings who are on the down¬ 
ward grade generally bearing an air of reckless gayety; 
they seldom lose an opportunity to help persons 
younger in error to step down a little faster for the 
sake of companionship in misery, or to popularize their 
own mistakes; and at each downward turn they gain 
new speed. This does not apply in particular to the 
extremely vicious, but rather to the careless in all 
classes : those of slightly loose or very easy habits in 
the highest ranks; those who say to themselves in 
their more sober moments, “Yes, this is not right, I 
know; to-morrow, or next year, I must change my 
course.” There is no legitimate end to such a career 
but in moral degradation, physical ruin, death. 

It is no pleasant task to dwell upon these features 
of human nature; they are facts, and must be noticed 
for facts’ sake. 


man’s motives. 

t 

Man’s motives fill the world with joy or sorrow. 
The human Sensibility! What an endless range of 
varied music may come from that instrument! Who 
would miss the study of its capacities? It holds every 
tone in the whole range of sounds, the lowest notes 
and the highest. From off its trembling strings the 
simple airs of child-life ripple; thence come the bright 


OBSERVATIONS. 


3 2 5 

and cheery glees of youth ; the monotones of idleness ; 
the sweet but sensuous waves of voluptuous melody, 
that breathe wine and dance and wantonness till the 
cords glow and loosen, and the strains die in a monody 
of the prodigal’s sullen, miserable wail; the rattle of 
guns and the beating of drums in life’s earnest battle; 
the harsh clangor of dishonorable strife’s conflicting 
elements, making the very frame quiver with their 
discord; the rustling murmur of the gathering storms 
of trial; the subduing, soft, all-conquering music of 
honest love and sympathy — tender, holy, deep and 
true; the sublime grandeur of eternal hopes — the 
pure spirit’s divinest harmonies! 

It has been impossible to speak of the various 
branches of the Sensibility and their resulting mo¬ 
tives without mentioning the relative value and 
importance of these motives. And, as their value 
or importance depends upon their moral worth, we 
have spoken of right and wrong, and man’s moral 
nature, although we have not yet come in our analy¬ 
sis and study to that division where man is shown 
to have a moral nature, or, indeed, obligations of 
any sort. In Intuition we see his capacity to know 
right and wrong, in case such things really exist. 
That such things as right and wrong do exist, will 
appear in the next division of the mind, namely, 
the Will. There man’s obligation, and, hence, his 
moral nature, will appear. 

So charming is the study of the Sensibilities it 
is difficult to pass to the next subject, for in them we 




THE SENSIBILITIES. 


3 2 6 

see sympathy, joy, love and hate, fears, desires and 
hopes, which are by far the larger share of all there 
is in life for most people. But let it not be for¬ 
gotten that without the eye of Intellect and the 
firm hand of Will, this flood of feeling may be like 
a great spring gushing from the mountain side and 
spending its wealth of waters in waste places. With¬ 
out an eye to choose its direction, without a firm 
hand to regulate its reckless flow, the lovely vales 
will never see its greatest beauty, and the parched 
fields will seldom know its blessing. 








\ 





FIRST THOUGHTS. 

HEN making our general analysis 
of man, his mind-nature was di- 

i 

vided into three grand divisions: 
Intellect, Sensibilities, and Will. 
We have already seen, in the section 
on the Intellect, that it was the knowing and 
judging power of man, and in the Sensibilities 
that they furnished the motive power. It has 
grown very common to liken man’s mind to a 
locomotive engine, and no better figure offers 
itself. The Intellect is the frame and machin¬ 
ery of the engine. Its parts are all perfect, 
every wheel and every lever is in its place, its head¬ 
light shines bright and clear along the track, it stands 
there cold and motionless. The Sensibilities are the 
water in the boiler and the fire beneath. The fire 
burns, the steam presses against the valves, and the 
engine pulses and throbs with the forces within. What 

more is needed? The Will, the engineer who sets 

327 













THE WILL. 


328 

the reverse-lever for a forward or a backward course, 
then pulls the throttle-valve. The engine now moves 
out upon the track, a thing of life and power. 

So the Intellect and the Sensibilities furnish man’s 
motives for action, and decide what the conditions of 
action shall be ; that done, the Will acts. There can 
be no better place than right here to call the reader’s 
attention to the fact that there are two distinct kinds 
of actions, those of the mind only, as in thinking, and 
those of both mind and body, where we may see the 
body or its various members in motion, pursuing some 
end. Thinking is a very important kind of action, in 
fact the more important of the two. A person may be 
sitting perfectly still, yet be very busy indeed. One 
reason why thought-acts are so important is, that in 
whatever direction a man’s thought runs, his other 
actions, his outward bodily actions, will follow along 
in the same direction. As a man’s heart is, so will his 
life be, says the proverb. It is very necessary to bear 
in mind these two kinds of actions. 

But to return : the work of the Will is the result 
to which Intellect and Sensibility lead; and it is 
that alone through which they can become forceful. 
The relation which the Will sustains to the other 

t 

faculties of the mind is of the utmost importance, 
and the utility of a study of this faculty can scarcely 
be over-estimated. There is another circumstance 
which makes a thorough knowledge of the Will, and 
the observed principles in accordance with which it 
operates, of double value to every thinking person: 


FIRST THOUGHTS. 


3 2 9 


it is that there is no question which enters more 
deeply into all theological systems than the one of 
whether our wills are free or not — stated in terms 
of theology, “are we, or are we not, free moral 
agents?” The answer to this question is the corner¬ 
stone upon which all systems of religion must of 
necessity rest. Out of the actions of the Will a 
very curious feature arises, namely, that of 

HABIT. 

A habit is formed in the following manner. After 
an act is once done and the occasion arises for a 
repetition of that act, the mind, remembering what 
was done before, travels over the path much quicker 
than at first. The feelings respond more readily, 
because the Intellect calls louder, as it were. Another 
and another repetition is still more readily made, and 
in time the very nerves interested in accomplishing 
this act grow stronger and larger with the continued 
exercise. All improvement in the fingers of the 
knitter, in the eye of the painter, in the tongue of 
the speaker, in the hand of the mechanic, is the 
gift of habit. Habit is a channel worn in the sub¬ 
stance of the soul, along which our purpose and our 
ability run with increased facility. Thus, oft repeated 
actions, though disagreeable at first, and even though 
really hurtful, become a pleasure, which to omit 
would be positively painful. 

The power of habit is simply wonderful. It either 
strengthens or weakens the will almost beyond belief. 



TIIE WILL. 


n in 

OJ U 

It becomes finally “a second nature.” An account is 
on record of a native of India who had committed a 
murder, and, in order not only to save his life, but, 
wdiat was of much more consequence to him, his caste, 
he submitted to the penalty imposed. This was, that 
he should sleep for seven years on a bedstead without 
any mattress, the whole surface of which was studded 
with points of iron resembling nails, but not so sharp 
as to penetrate the flesh. He was seen in the fifth 
year of his probation, and his skin was then like the 
skin of a rhinoceros, but more callous; at that time, 
however, he could sleep comfortably on his bed of 
thorns, arid remarked, that at the expiration of the 
term of his sentence, he would most probably continue 
that method of sleep from choice which he had been 
obliged to adopt from necessity. 

Charles Dickens, in a conversation with a group of 
friends on this subject, told of an incident that occurred 
during one of his trips across the ocean. One of the 
passengers was a man who in early life had been a 
sailor, but, having fallen heir to an estate had not been 
on the sea for years. A heavy gale came up, and at 
the first stern command of the captain to the sailors, 
this quiet passenger in gentleman’s clothes sprang up 
and led the best of them out among the rigging, doing 
the most daring and the most dangerous tasks. On 
coming down, he appeared quite mortified to think he 
had so completely forgotten his proper place. Thus 
does habit assert itself. . 

With the idea of carrying our habits of thought 


HABIT. 


331 

over from this world into a future life, we are reminded 
of the old colored woman, who had a young niece that 
sorely tried her patience. The more attempts that 
were made to keep this wayward charge in the right 
path, the more she seemed to wander. One day, after 
reading some infidel book, she said quite impudently: 

“ Auntie, I ain’t gwine to believe in a hell no more. 
If dar is any hell, I jest wants to know whar dey gets 
all dere brimstone for dat place; dat’s what I would 
like ter know.” 

The old woman fixed her eyes on her niece, and 
with a tear on her cheek, said : 

“ Ah, honey, darlin’, you look out you don’t go dare ; 
for you’ll find de people all takes der own brimstone 
wid ’em.” 

And may we not inquire how much of the happiness 
of a future life depends upon habits of virtuous cheer¬ 
fulness in this ? 

Habits are formed by slow procession from small 
things to great ones, not by any one violent action. 

All habits gather by unseen degrees 
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. 

Like flakes of snow, that fall unperceived upon the 
earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed 
one another. As the snow gathers together, so are our 
habits formed. No single flake that is added to the 
heap produces a sensible change; no single action 
creates, however it may exhibit, a man’s character; but 
.as the tempest hurls the avalanche down the mountain, 


332 THE WILL. 

and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so 
passion, acting upon the elements of mischief which per¬ 
nicious habits have slowly gathered together, may over¬ 
throw the edifice of truth and virtue. If we look back 
upon the usual course of our feelings, we shall find that 
we are more influenced by the frequent recurrence of 
objects than by their weight and importance; and that 
habit has too often more force in forming our char¬ 
acters than our opinions have. The mind naturally 
takes its tone and complexion from what it habitually 
contemplates. This effect of habit in guiding men 
accounts for the progress of deception under the 
control of designing men of great enthusiasm, such 
as Mohammed, the pioneer of Mohammedanism, and 
Joseph Smith, the originator of Mormonism. They 
began by some trick to help themselves, and, discov¬ 
ering their power over the simple-minded, they per¬ 
sisted in deception till they became unable to think 
or act but as deceivers. At length, probably, the habit 
was confirmed by their becoming insane converts to 
their own lies, believing the whims of their own imagi¬ 
nations to be the especial revelations of Heaven. Like 
a horse in a mill, the mind thus goes round in the same 
circle, till it turns blind and incapable of straight¬ 
forward exertion. Its very dreams are of that beaten 
track. 

The diminutive chains of habit are seldom heavy 
enough to be felt until they are too strong to be 
broken. It is quite evident that it is in our power 
to form either habits for good or habits that are 


HABIT. 


3 *i 
00 

evil. Lord Brougham says: “ I trust everything 
under God to habit, upon which, in all ages, the 
law-giver, as well as the school-master, has mainly 
placed his reliance; habit, which makes everything 
easy, and casts all difficulties upon the turning from 
a regular course. Make sobriety a habit, and intem¬ 
perance will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and 
recklessness will be as contrary to our feelings as 
the most atrocious crimes are to any of us.” We 
may voluntarily put ourselves in the way of acquir¬ 
ing habits of any desired kind — habits of study, of 
sobriety, of industry, of patience, or habits of thought. 
So we may correct an evil habit already formed, or 
an evil tendency of our nature. Buffon, naturally 
lazy, became a good worker, and, indeed, very indus¬ 
trious, by habit. A man with a natural appetite for 
strong drink may overcome it by avoiding all things 
of a stimulating tendency, and cultivating continued 
habits of sobriety. A rescued captive from among 
the Indians said that his savage masters, in teaching 
him the use of the bow and arrow, had him exer¬ 
cise in the various attitudes, and kept him drawing 
the bow-string to his ear, for three months together, 
before they would suffer him to set an arrow. 

Habit is the parents’ hold upon the child, and 
the good man’s power against evil. The formation 
of a habit reduces to this simple direction: Apply 
yourself to a given plan industriously, punctually, 
and persistently. 



334 


THE WILL. 


SPHERE OF THE WILL. 

To define a little more accurately the sphere of 
the Will, we may say that all our actions deliber¬ 
ately taken, are the direct result of the willing' 
power. The beating of the heart, the action of the 
lungs and stomach, and some other such actions, are 
involuntary, and have little or nothing to do with 
Will. Walking, talking, singing, writing, etc., are 
examples of those deeds which are voluntary, that 
is, caused by forethought, by the deliberate willing 
that they shall be performed. We can scarcely 
imagine what would be the condition of a person 
destitute of this executive power of the mind. No 
one ever existed utterly without it. Such a person 
would be without the ability to perform the com¬ 
monest and easiest of the voluntary motions. But, 
though we see no one so entirely helpless, we meet 
a great many who are comparatively so. The drunk¬ 
ard and the debauchee who have allowed their animal 
\ 

passions to disarm their Wills are every-day sights. 
They have lost the power to act in opposition to 
the impulses of certain branches of their Sensibilities. 
Everybody knows what a sad state is theirs. An¬ 
other class of weak-willed people with whom we often 
come into contact is made up of those who, as it is 
commonly expressed, have no wills of their own. 
They are unable to stand against the arguments, 
entreaties, or threats of other men. They are easily 
persuaded out of or into any given line of action. 


SPHERE OF THE WILL. 


335 


They can be induced to do what their judgments 
tell them would be detrimental to their best interests. 
Such people never accomplished anything. They 
have not persistence enough to adopt a plan of 
operations and then stand by it. Every wind seems, 
to bring with it a change of mind for them; they 
are continuously shifting about from one thing to 
another, trying to go in all directions at once. The 
story of their lives is but a long record of hopeful 
plans deserted before completion, of failures in all 
sorts of brilliant undertakings, solely through irresolu¬ 
tion. Such being the case, the importance of under¬ 
standing and cultivating the Will can readily be 
seen, and we will now pass to a brief examination of 
the Will, and of its acts, called willing. 


Analysis of the Will. 

As I sit here writing, I suddenly take my knife and 
sharpen my pencil; now the problem is to find what is. 
involved in that act. Before I sharpen the pencil, 
there certainly must be the pencil to be sharpened; 
that is, the first condition to any act of the will power 
is that there be something to be done. There being 
a pencil to be sharpened, I must have a motive for 
performing the labor. The mere fact that the pencil 
exists would not impel me to sharpen it. My motive 
probably is a desire to increase the legibility of the 
writing. But that is not all. I may have the pencil, 
and may desire that it shall have a better point, and 


336 


THE WILL. 


yet, for lack of time, or on account of some other 
interfering circumstance, I may not sharpen it. The 
determination not to do a thing is as much an object of 
choice as the determination to do it. Thus it is seen 
that two things are necessary to a choice. The next 
step, then, evidently is, that, taking into consideration 
all the circumstances which have any bearing upon the 
matter, I shall decide, or choose, whether to sharpen 
the pencil or not. Having made my choice, the final 
stage of the proceeding is arrived at, viz., that of voli¬ 
tion, the incomprehensible process of willing, strictly 
speaking. In any act involving any motion of the 
body, when the choice is fully made, the motor nerves 
carry the message to the muscles and they move in 
obedience to the Will. That, so far as the mind is 
concerned, completes the action. All that follows 
is purely an affair of the body, consisting merely in 
the muscular actions; and unless something stronger 
than we opposes us, the deed will be performed. 

Then there are the acts of the mind, purely mental, 
which do not require any motion of the limbs, or 
body. As has been said, a man may be sitting per¬ 
fectly motionless and yet be very busy indeed. His 
imagination, his memory, his reflective powers may 
each or all be deeply engaged in some chosen task. 
Too many people do not recognize the vast extent 
and far-reaching importance of this line of action, 
commonly called brain-work. The common multitude, 
though professing to be ashamed of laziness, yet allow 
their very highest powers, namely, their mental powers, 


ANALYSIS OF THE WILL. 


337 


to rust away in almost utter idleness, or follow no 
guide but the whims of fancy. It is a great thing, a 
great thing, to be able to turn the mind upon some 
chosen line of thought and hold it there until a 
worthy task is completed. This subject has been 
dwelt upon at length, beginning page 175, and under 
the head of “ How to Think,” a number of methods 
are given to aid the inquiring reader in developing 
this branch of power. 

The following is an analysis of the Will, dia¬ 
grammed as usual, showing its divisions in their order. 


Will. 


Necessary conditions. 


f Something to be done. 
[ A motive for doing it. 



Choice. 

Volition proper. 


MOTIVES. 


It will be worth the trouble to examine a little more 
closely each of these elements which go to make up a 
complete act of the Will. The first of the necessary 
conditions, however, is so simple, and at the same time 
so various, as not to need any discussion. There are 
millions upon millions of things to be either done or 
left undone, and each of these calls for an exercise 
of the Will. With regard to the second essential, the 
motive, the case is different. We cannot conceive that 
a man should do anything without having a reason for 
doing it. His reason may not always be what we 

should regard as a good one; it may not always be 
22 


\ 


THE WILL. 


intellectual in its character; it may be merely an 
animal desire; but whatever it may be, there must 
always be a motive, and one sufficient to produce a 
choice in the mind of the doer. Since it is man’s 
privilege to examine every motive before allowing it 
to move him, it becomes desirable for him to know 
what motives are good, to what extent they are good, 
and the points where they cross the limit and begin 
to be of doubtful good, or real hurt. As we look at 
all forms of existence on the earth, from the clods of 
the field, up past plants to animals, and thence to man, 
it is evident that the lowest thing is created as a 
foundation for a higher form of existence. This is 
the law of Nature. The elements of the earth are 
necessary for plants to live; plants are higher in the 
scale of existence than clods. Plants are necessary in 
order for animals to live; animal life is higher than 
plant life, and the animal uses all there is below it in 
nature for the good of its existence. But as plants 
live for the purpose of making a higher form of life 
(that of animals) possible, so the animal part of man 
lives solely for the use and benefit of his higher life. 
Hence these desires, feelings, motives of men which 
are necessary to the continuance of the race, to his 
bodily welfare, are the lowest, because they are 
necessary in order for man to have other desires. 
This, then, is man’s rule and limit. Any pursuit of 
mere worldly affairs, or of bodily gratification and 
sensual pleasure, when made a chief end, or allowed 
to engross time, strength and attention, to the neglect 


MOTIVES. 


I 


339 


or detriment of man’s spiritual being, is always hurtful. 
It is well to note here that there are more earthy 
elements in existence than there are plants, more plants 
in the world than animals: the base is broader than 
the structure above. So man’s animal or lower feel¬ 
ings are greater in number and frequency than his 
higher sentiments and aspirations. His animal desires 
press themselves upon his notice more or less con¬ 
stantly. Their very frequency is a proof of their 
baser origin. They are but the foundations of his 
being, however, and must be strictly relegated to their 
proper place. None of their coarse, rough elements 
dare be used in the strong, beautiful, true edifice — 
the moral character — which he is rearing above them. 

CHOICE. 

Having the two prior conditions, namely, something 
to be done, and a motive for doing it, the next essen¬ 
tial, as was seen, is a choice; that is, a decision as to 
whether, under the existing circumstances, we will do 
the deed or not do it. Probably every time a matter 
is presented to us for decision, the question arises, 
either in words or in thought, and perhaps even uncon¬ 
sciously, almost, “Shall I do it?” Sometimes the 
weight of reason and motive is all on one side, and the 
decision is made so quickly as to seem immediate and 
unconscious. At other times, when the balance hangs 
almost even, the decision is only reached through a 
long and painful process of thought and reasoning. 
But be it long or short, there is no doubt that some 




340 


THE WILL. 


such process always takes place. Sometimes the Will 
is surrounded by such weighty conditions that the 
choice seems scarcely free. A little thought will show 
that in strictness we are free to make our own choice, 
although there may be practical certainty as to what 
that choice will be. The case of a man attacked by 
burglars and threatened with death if he does not 
reveal the place where he has secreted his money, will 
serve as an example. It is quite certain that if the 
money is his own, and there is no principle of honor or 
trust at stake, he will choose to give up the money, 
yet he may not; he has an alternative — death, with 
which no one can possibly interfere. The legal phrase 
describing a man in such a condition is in duress , and 
he is not responsible in law for what he does; for 
instance, a note given, or a deed signed, under such 
circumstances is void. The point is this: the freedom 
of choice is always ours, though the power to attain the 
choice may be taken away by accident, disease, or the 
superior force of others. Hence the just judge looks 
at the motives of the inner hearts of men rather than 
at their outward actions. The choice is always free, 
and therefore responsible. 

It is well to note the order of action in which the 
three divisions of the mind act and unite to reach 
a choice, or Will-action. The order is this: Intel¬ 
lect, first; Sensibilities, next, and, finally, the Will. 
Passing along the street, I may see something in a 
show-window; my Intellect tells me that it is a good 
thing. But that would not be sufficient to induce 



CHOICE. 


341 


me to go into the store. Knowing its utility or 
beauty, I feel a desire for the article, and that 
desire furnishes a motive for considering the ques¬ 
tion of obtaining it; and, after measuring the ques¬ 
tion of good involved, I will to obtain it, or I will 
to think no more about it. Evidently this order is 
universal. Without the Intellect there is no knowl¬ 
edge of things; without the Sensibilities there is no 
motive. As differing from mere impulse, a rational 
Will involves rational choice; but without the Intel¬ 
lect there can be no rationality, and without the 
Sensibilities there can be no motive for choosing. 
But, having these, we have all that we need, not as 
a cause of Will, but as a necessary condition for the 
Will to act. 

As these three products of the mind have a different 
origin, so they have differing natures, and perform 
different offices. We might have Intellect without 
Sensibilities or Will, but we could have no Sensi¬ 
bilities or Will without Intellect. So we might have 
both Intellect and Sensibilities without Will, but cer¬ 
tainly no Will without both the former. The Intellect 
gives us knowledge, simply, and when the Sensibilities 
are added, a new field for investigation is opened to 
the Intellect. Then when the Will is added, its action 
not only opens new fields to the Intellect again, but 
gives new forms to the Sensibilities. Thus they inter¬ 
mingle and regulate each other, but their relative 
position, as stated, must not be forgotten. Now, 
when a choice is to be made between a lower and 


342 


THE WILL. 


a higher good, it is the nature of man to choose the 
higher good. This is man’s moral nature. The first 
principle of right and wrong lies here in man’s obli¬ 
gation not to violate a universal law of Nature by 
failing to choose the highest good. Only those 
feelings, those desires, those motives, those acts, are 
right, and to that extent are they right, which lead 
man toward his highest good. We now see man to 
be an intelligent, free, moral, forceful cause. He is 
a cause. By his intelligence, by his ability to choose 
and direct the forces in his own nature, he is a.being 
capable of purposely causing that to be, which, but 
for him, would not have been. Herein, as respects 
freedom and power, he is in the image of the Creator. 

We have now what cannot be found elsewhere in 
Nature: a being capable of building up character, 
of being loved, respected, venerated, and rewarded; 
capable', also, of being despised, contemned, abhorred 
and punished. You may train an animal, you may 
discipline him, but in no proper sense can he be said 
to have guilt. As has been said, an animal cannot 
make a fool of himself. But every human being, by 
his ability to understand and choose his course, may 
in time become an angel or a demon. 

Finally, it appears that in man’s free and intelli¬ 
gent choice he reaches a higher order of being. If 
he is free, there may be inducements to mould his 
choice, but no sufficient force. He is himself his 
own force. He is superior to all else in Nature. 
That force is his Spirit. This Spirit makes its 


>» 


CHOICE. 


343 


home in the pinnacle of the moral character each 
man builds. Its necessities are all below it. Remorse 
and shame will come by necessity after choice, where, 
by a similar necessity there might have been a virtu¬ 
ous self-satisfaction, hope and joy. 

The grand climax of man’s nature, bodily and 
mental, is thus reached : a free, intelligent, creative 
(causative) Spirit: a being capable of carrying its 
moral character into the future, capable of under¬ 
standing and longing for immortality. 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 

In our examination of the Will we have arrived 
at the conclusion that it is free in its choice, but 
fairness demands the statement that this is a dis¬ 
puted point. It is not in keeping with our purpose 
to enter into the details of the discussion. There 
are many distinguished thinkers in each of the oppos¬ 
ing ranks. Hobbs, Priestly, Leibnitz, Edwards, Cal¬ 
vin and Mill, are among those who have in various 
ways denied the freedom of the Will. It is not 
only among Christian nations that this question has 
been agitated; it was discussed among the ancient 
Greeks, and among the Jews; the Sadducees believed 
in the freedom of the Will, they and the Pharisees 
dividing upon this matter. Perhaps the discussion 
. has nowhere been more violent than among the 
Mohammedans, their bible, the Koran, teaching the 



344 


THE WILL. 


non-freedom of the Will, or fatalism, and a large 
body, called Kadrites, dissenting from that belief. 

A most complete showing of an extreme in this 
doctrine, is given by Diderot, who played so promi¬ 
nent a part in the French literature of the last century. 
He went so far as to deny all moral responsibility, and 
say that “the doer of good is lucky, not virtuous.” 
“Reproach others for nothing,” says he, “and repent 
of nothing; this is the first step of wisdom.” The 
tendency of this doctrine is to destroy all such ideas as 
virtue, vice, sin, goodness, and to bring about such a 
system of philosophy as that indicated in the following 
sentences : “ God is the real and only responsible doer 
of whatever comes to pass, and man the passive instru¬ 
ment in his hand. Remorse, regret, repentance, are 
idle terms, and to praise or blame ourselves or others, 
for anything that we or they have done, is merely 
absurd.” Comment upon such teaching is unnecessary. 

Among the great thinkers who have advocated the 
doctrine that the Will is free, are Cousin, Jouffroy, 
Tappan, Stewart, Hamilton, and Kant. The tendency 
of this doctrine is to hold men responsible for what 
they do. Vice and virtue are not mere names, but 
realities. If a man does wrong, he is blamable, because 
he might have done right. 

STRENGTH OF WILL. 

Men differ in power of Intellect, and in the 
strength of the emotional faculties of the mind'. 
In like manner, their Wills differ in strength. One 


STRENGTH OF WILL. 


345 


man seems almost destitute of this valuable power; 
another is as firm as the unyielding rock. The men 
whose names are found worthy of inscription upon 
the scrolls of history have almost uniformly been 
men possessing great strength of Will — men who 
never deserted a purpose once deliberately formed. 
Among military men, Hannibal, Alexander, Caesar, 
Cromwell, Napoleon, Washington, and Grant, were 
such men; and their successes were won as much 
by this one characteristic as by anything else. There 
was one period of the American Revolution when 
Washington’s patient firmness was the salvation of 
his country. Grant would “ fight it out on that line 
if it took all summer,” and he won. So with the 
others. The best examples in history are found in 
lives of men who left behind them the luxuries of 
life and unflinchingly endured privation for the sake 
of principle. Great scholars have always had a con¬ 
siderable degree of steadfastness; otherwise they 
would have shrunk from the long days and nights 
of toilsome study, not always agreeable by any 
means. Schiller’s mighty Will enabled him, almost 
dead with pulmonary consumption, to enrich his 
native land and the whole civilized world by some 
of the finest literature of which any age or country 
can boast. It was firmness of Will, united to a high 
sense of honor, that took Regulus back to Carthage 
to suffer the infernalest tortures that Punic ingenuity 
could suggest. It is the same thing that gives the 
American Indian power to die at the stake without 



346 


THE WILL. 


a murmur. The same spirit enabled the religious 
martyrs of the middle ages to make their heroic 
sacrifices. The most successful orators have usually, 
though not always, possessed this feature of character. 
Webster, Henry, Calhoun, and Adams, among those 
of America, were men of this stamp. Cicero, per¬ 
haps, with the exception of Caesar the most wonderful 
man of Rome, was deficient in executive ability, 
though he managed to overcome it in the most 
celebrated event of his life — the defeat of Cataline’s 
conspiracy. A political leader must have this prop¬ 
erty. Cromwell, amid turmoil and rebellion, estab- 

I 

lished a firm government, strong enough to receive 
the hearty respect of the whole world. He died and 
left it to his irresolute son Richard, who was com¬ 
pelled to abandon it in little more than a year. The 
importance of a strong Will is perfectly evident from 
all these facts. Nothing can exceed it in the influence 
which it wields upon a person’s character, no differ¬ 
ence what may be his or her station in life. 

Mary Borden held a position in a dry-goods estab¬ 
lishment at moderately good wages. She was a 
lovable girl, of fairly pretty face and very handsome 
figure. She had many admirers and one or two lovers, 
but no one seemed an earnest suitor. Her heart was 
therefore, free, though it was her nature to respond 
quickly to kindness, to love easily and, perhaps, too 
passionately. One of the younger managers, a Mr. L., 
had charge of the department where she worked, and 
one evening while musing over the incidents of the 



I 


STRENGTH OF WILL. 347 

day the fact forced itself upon her thoughtful mind 
that he stopped to speak to her oftener than mere 
business required. His manner was warmer and more 
attentive than to others, and she knew that she had 
already sometimes waited a moment, or again hastened 
a little, that she might meet him in his rounds, as she 
was so sure of a kind word, a smile, or at least a 
sympathetic glance. These thoughts confused her, 
and for the next few days she was more reserved. 
But her manner now had only the effect of drawing 
more marked attention from Mr. L., and she feared 
lest her associates should soon notice his partiality 
for her. In her quieter moments, she calmly thought 
of his circumstances and hers. She was mainly 
ignorant of his history, or his daily life outside of 
the establishment where they worked. But she knew 
enough to know that marriage between them was out 
of the question, and, in fact, she remembered hearing 
him in conversation about a divorce case in the city, 
speak quite carelessly of the whole sad affair, and 
perhaps he belonged to that rather numerous class 
of men who seem to have a light opinion of the 
institution of marriage altogether. Here she felt her 
cheeks burning and she said to herself quite angrily, 
“ Pshaw; how foolish I am ! He has never made love 
to me, much less talked in the direction of matrimony. 
It is wrong for me to be thinking of him in this way. 
It is unjust to him. I know no evil of him, and he 
must be an honorable gentleman or he would not 

1 

hold the position he does.” 


348 


THE WILL. 


An evening or two later was stormy, and she did 
not refuse L.’s kindly offered company home, though 
there was no need of an escort in her case at all, 
and the lame girl in her department always went a 
much longer distance home entirely unnoticed by 
this gentleman. But she had few friends, because 
she was poor, as the world goes, and it was a genuine 
relief from her own thoughts at times to listen to 
his conversation, pure in itself, yet careless, free and 
jolly. She did not repel his mild caress at parting. 
He had been so respectful and kind, and her own 
nature responded so readily to his magnetism that 
she could not. He had asked her to accompany 
him to an entertainment she very much wished to 
attend, and though her good common sense loudly 
said “No!” her lips had answered him “Yes.” That 
was a night of trial for Mary Borden. Her uncle, 
who had given her a home after the death of her 
parents, was an invalid, and entirely too poor to sup¬ 
port her. If she left her present place of employ¬ 
ment she could not hope to find another soon. But 
she had the wisdom to recognize her own weakness, 
and the growing danger of her position if she remained 
there any longer, and the morning’s postman deliv¬ 
ered a note from her to the head of the firm, saying 
she was obliged to resign her place at once. 

A few hours later L. himself called “ to see if she 
was ill,” he said, and to tell her the proprietors valued 
her services very highly, and hoped she would return 

to her old place, or a better one soon, if she would 

* 


STRENGTH OF WILL. 


349 


accept it. She replied that it would be impossible to 
return. Her aunt left the room and they were alone. 

Mr. L. said he would miss her presence there more 
than he could easily express; that he had learned to 
regard her as his own sister and — but the girl inter¬ 
rupted him. In writing the note the night before she 
had taken one step in what she thought was the right 
direction, and she was now much stronger to follow 
cool, good sense. She interrupted him at once, saying 
she knew that the circumstances surrounding their lives 
made it altogether improper for them to entertain any 
such sentiments, and she hoped he would not embar¬ 
rass her further. His face looked sad and, indeed, 
pained, and he drew nearer to her, saying, “Why, Miss 
Borden, I have certainly never offended you willingly, 
for no one can esteem you more than I, or have 
a higher respect for you.” She had never been 
approached so before. His manner had always been 
gentlemanly, and she was not able to argue with him. 
She saw one fact plainly, and what she had already 
done strengthened her Will to speak that fact out at 
once. “ Mr. L., knowing what you do of your circum¬ 
stances and mine, if you really had any true respect for 
me you would not be in this house at all. Please 
excuse me.” His face took on a brazen look, and he 
left the house without more words. Thus a Will not 
naturally strong was guarded by the thoughtful mind, 
and in moments when a proper choice was easiest, took 
such steps as would strengthen itself to make a proper 
choice at all times. 


I 



350 


THE WILL. 


It is universally conceded that of two persons, the 
one possessing a brilliant Intellect and a weak Will, 
and the other a moderate Intellect and a resolute 
Will, the latter has by far the better chances for 
success in his life-work, whatever that may be. 

CULTIVATION OF THE WILL. 

This faculty, like all others, has its extreme, which 
must be avoided; it is called obstinacy, or stubborn¬ 
ness. But there are vastly more people with Wills 
too weak than too strong. It is susceptible of 
cultivation, and we are to proceed about its improve¬ 
ment in the same way that we would about that of 
any other faculty. But one rule need be given ^ fix 
firmly upon some reasonable purpose, and then per¬ 
sist in it; never leave anything half-done without 
the weightiest reasons. The very strongest aid that 
can be given a weak Will is a well-formed habit. 





L& 



<i? 



have seen in the preceding pages 
how the bodily nature of man, 
while showing its similarity to 
the . animal world, yet is fitted 
to be the home of a higher intelli¬ 
gence than is found in any animal. The 
machinery and methods by which the body 
grows and is sustained, the system of nerves 
which form the medium of action of mind 
upon body, and the importance of perfect 
health and strength, both for a better life 
to-day and for a better life in the children 

of the future, were briefly but plainly shown. 

And following that, the mental nature of man was 

analyzed, and we saw in the Intellect those quali¬ 
ties or capacities of mind called intuitive faculties, 
seeming to be inherent in the nature of all men, 
forming an inner life and coloring the existence of 
all in a similar manner; the five senses which form 

the highways for a knowledge of all outside things 

351 



/ 





















GENERAL SUMMARY. 


35 2 

to enter the mind; and how men know things and 
reason about them, and dwell upon them in memory 
and imagination. And in the Sensibilities, how our 
feelings thrill our nerves and quicken the circulation 
of the blood, giving rise to the popular notion which 
places the home of the feelings in the heart; we 
noted the simple emotions that spring up almost 
without thought, and the rational emotions which 
more or less call into play the reasoning powers; 
the affections of love and hate, which influence the 
lives of all; the desires we hold in common with 
the most ordinary animals, and the desires which 
mark us as creatures of the highest intelligence. 
Following that, the nature and functions of the Will 
were examined; and looking back at the other two 
branches of the mind we saw how the Intellect, 
following a stream of thought may come upon an 
idea which will arouse some one of the elements 
of the Sensibilities — will startle the heart, as it 
were — and produce a hastening pulse and glow of 
the feelings ; and in turn, how the feelings may, 
and too often do, suggest to the Intellect what 
shqll hold its attention. Then confining our view 
to the Will, we saw the power of habit, the science 
of motives, and how a man, understanding the ten¬ 
dencies of habits and thoughts, and throwing himself 
into line with helping influences, becomes a being 
with free choice, — in harmony with law a free 
moral agent. This shows that man should be a 
creator of circumstances rather than a creature of 





GENERAL SUMMARY. 


353 


circumstances, and that each human being is a free, 
causative Spirit. As the Intellect is built upon the 
body, as the Sensibilities are built upon both body 
and Intellect, and as by all three of these existing 
as they do, a free Will becomes possible, so finally 
above and upon all, as the finishing act of creation, 
is man’s spiritual nature. 

These facts brought us to the question : If man 

can control his course, which way shall that course 

lie? If he can arrest the stream of thought in his 

mind, in what direction shall he endeavor to turn it ? 

In short, what acts, mental or bodily, or both, are 

right and proper ? And we turned for answer to 

the fact in nature that all the vast volume of earth 

governed by simpler forces is used as the base upon 

¥ 

which the creator built a plant life and an animal 
life governed by forces more and more complex; 
and find it suggested that man, in turn, should 
wisely cherish and use the broader, the baser, the 
animal side of himself, to subserve his higher in¬ 
telligence, the more complex forces of his spiritual 
side; that he should compare himself with the ani¬ 
mals, not to become a refined and more powerful 
animal, but to develop the new forces added to 
his nature, and become something really more and 
higher than any animal. 

Thus man finds every precept of philosopher or 
saint which points him toward a higher life, to be 
founded in that law of creation forever building 

upon lower and simpler forms of existence other 

23 


354 


GENERAL SUMMARY. 


forms more complex and higher. Thus will he 
take care to respect both the truth that is known 
and the possibilities of the truth that is yet un¬ 
known, to reverence the philosophy of mystery as 
well as the philosophy of fact. Neither will he 
neglect any one part of his nature, to unduly de¬ 
velop another, but while he trains the creative power 
of imagination for a flight into spiritual lands, he 
will remember the feeling which clasps his hand 
forever to the hand of his brother. 

With such conceptions of truth and of life, that 
outgrowth of his nature known as Duty will never 
cease to be his earnest study. 



9 






ORIGIN OF DUTY. 

AD man been made a stone — 
lifeless, witless, inert,— he would 
indeed have never felt what we 
call obligations or responsibili¬ 
ties. The stone, incapable of 
thought or action, awaits the 
moving force of a thinking being, or lies 
through ages the sport of circumstances. 
It is not in the nature of a stone to have 
a duty to perform. The idea is absurd. 

But as a result of mans nature, he is 
hedged about on all sides with obligations 
and responsibilities. He must act, and 
every act will be as surely followed by some result, 
and every result will in some way reflect upon the 
actor. Such is the law of his nature. If he says, 
“ I will not act,” then immediately the elements of 
his being begin to decay. Inaction is death. Even 

the idle thoughts that are allowed to occupy the mind 

355 

























356 


DUTY. 


leave their impressions behind, as the waves ripple 
the sand on the shore; the impressions harden and 
remain! Nowhere can a man turn and escape the 
responsibilities which are the direct outcome of his 
natural make-up. Trying to think of a rational being 
without duties to perform is as absurd as trying to 
bring a su\t in law against a slab of marble. Human 
existence is a battle in which there can be no retreat. 
Cowards are not even allowed to die. Every one 
must either fight bravely or suffer miserably. 

But a grand discovery breaks upon us here. The 
enemy has never yet proven invincible, and the brave 
fighters are always finding happiness. A duty care¬ 
fully ascertained and faithfully done never failed to 
make the doer better, and betterment is the correct 
name for happiness. It is as natural as the falling 
of the dew. 

The study of the origin and nature of duty, then, 
becomes one of boundless importance and unceasing 
interest. 

It has just been said that duty is the natural result 
of mans peculiar make-up. By his Intellect he sees 
and knows things, and reasons upon them. Through 
his Sensibilities come the whole ranee of feelines that 
impel him toward action. In the Will is found his 
power to act or not, as he freely chooses. Shall he 
act? How? His choice in this matter decides the 
direction or tendency of his life. When we see a person 
going toward the east, we rightly think he has some 
object to attain in that direction. Does my way lie to 


ORIGIN OF DUTY. 


357 


the east ? What shall the direction of my life be ? 
Thus does the study of the nature of man bring us 
to this question. Thus do we see why it is forever 
present in the minds of all. What shall the direction 
of my life be? 

The course of Nature has always been from the 
lower toward the higher. (Read page 338.) This is 
the underlying lesson of all history, and of all natural 
laws. From the lowest germs of life in creation up 
to the highest rank of intelligence, each successive step 
points up to something higher, and appears but to pave 

% 

the way for some more perfect form of being. 

To be in accord, then, with the common law of 
Nature, the direction of my life must be upward, 
onward and upward forever, toward that divine per¬ 
fection which planned the universe. Every part of 
man’s nature must be held to its true place and use, 
and all must point toward the continued elevation and 
perfection of the highest element, the ruling Spirit 
(See page 343) of the man. The supreme aim of life, 

the measure which is to stand in man’s Intellect 

• 

(reason) as a guide for his choice, is found. This 
constant endeavor to attain a higher degree of perfec¬ 
tion in our nature agrees not only with the law of ’ 
Nature but with all true and pure religion. 

But this supreme end always in view is not enough. 
The questions will come up daily, almost hourly: Is 
this the true road toward perfection? Will this aid 
me on my chosen way, or will it retard me? In other 
words: Is it right, or is it wrong? What ought I 


358 


DUTY. 


to do? These questions should be answered clearly 
and decisively; and our actions should be regulated 
in accordance with the answers given. The right 
should never be pushed aside for the sake of the 
expedient. But in order to do the right, it is first 
necessary to know the right, and to this end some 
plain and simple rule is of the utmost practical value. 

A duty is something that we owe; that is the mean¬ 
ing of the word; it is derived from a word which 
means “owed” Honesty, a payment of our just debts, 
then, lies at the base of all duty, and may be taken 
at once as a simple and comprehensive rule for all 
our lives, as we move on toward our one great aim. 
Because it is visibly the highest aim we could possi¬ 
bly have; and because, as we have just seen, it is our 
natural duty to carry ourselves to the highest point 
of development within our power to reach ; perfection 
is to be our end, and a complete honesty is to be our 
plain and common guide. 



What a glorious word is that, Duty! and what a 
glorious man is he who always keeps it in his mind, 


and shapes his conduct by it! His outward circum¬ 


stances may be comparatively mean, but he is intrin¬ 
sically far nobler than the rich or high-born barbarian 
who passes him haughtily by on the street. It may 
be that in following the behests of duty he will be 
compelled to go directly contrary to that which the 


NOBILITY OF DUTY. 


359 


world thinks right and fitting. For this he may be 
contemned or persecuted. But if his greatness and 
nobility are not now understood and recognized, they 
will be sometime, after the heat of present competi¬ 
tions has had time to die away. Then his character 

\ 

will shine out, and be the splendid center of light 
for all his age. Beautiful it is to see and understand 
that no worth, known or unknown, can die, even in 
this world. The work an unknown good man has 
done is like a vein of water flowing under the 
ground, secretly making the verdure green; it flows 
on and on, gathering strength by the way; some day 
it will break forth a living well, where many a weary 
traveler will find rest, and will be refreshed. It has 
ever been so, and it will always continue to be so; 
the honest, duty-loving man, in the midst of base 
time-servers, cannot but receive the love and admira¬ 
tion of all right-thinking men. 

The pride of every period in history is the names 
of its noble men whose sense of honor and honesty 
was so complete that they never allowed a thought 
of self to mar the discharge of every duty. What 
must have been the feelings of John Maynard as he 
stood at the wheel of the burning vessel, and the 
captain calling through the flames, “Can you hold 
us to the shore?” His voice went back clear and 
strong, “Aye, aye, sir.” It was his to know that 
the fire was cutting off the last chance of his own 
escape; that all on board were at the farther end of 
the boat, next the shore, which was near at hand; 


3 6 ° 


DUTY. 


that their lives depended upon his running the ves¬ 
sel aground the shore. In every breast of that 
trembling company was one question, Would the 
pilot stay at the wheel ? and their hearts stood still 
in suspense. None could reach Maynard. No one 
knows what his prayers were. The last words that 
ever reached mortal ears were the faithful promise, 
“ Aye, aye, sir.” That was his last promise, and he 
fulfilled it completely. All but himself were saved. 
No one asks if John Maynard sprang from some 
famous family. It is enough to know that his was 
the mettle of which heroes are made. 

But let it not be forgotten that duty seldom calls 
men to such sublime positions as that just described. 
It is in the common trials of every-day life, and to 
tasks that seem little, that duty calls us oftenest; 
and it is in these that we may see the true worth 
of people. That nation is weak, indeed, whose young 
men have not the spirit to become John Maynards. 
Such weaklings make our faithless lovers, our default¬ 
ers, our promise breakers, our wife deserters and 
dishonest scoundrels. 

Iappiness IN f ulfilling Duty. 

It has already been said that the greatest develop¬ 
ment of any part of our nature was favorable to all 
the others, and that the unhealthy condition of one 
part was likely to show itself in the weakness of others. 
We shall find here a good illustration of this statement. 


HAPPINESS OF FULFILLING DUTY. 361 

Few persons are so depraved as not to suffer the 
pangs of remorse when they have consciously done 
wrong. This remorse is the keenest of all sorrows ; 
it seems to eat into the very life, and gnaw at the 
vitals with its pitiless fangs. The agony of Prome¬ 
theus, chained to a rock and eaten alive by vultures, 
was as nothing compared with the misery of him who 
is tortured by an outraged conscience. The spectre 
of a crime once committed will haunt the unfortunate 
doer of the deed until his mind and body go down in 
ruin. A man’s health cannot long resist the attacks 
of that terrible mental torture which follows after a 
crime of any magnitude ; and the more sensitive and 
true his organization, the less the crime required to 
unsettle his mind and weaken his body. 

Duplicity, dishonesty, and other forms of wrong 

% 

doing, destroy that noble frankness and independence 
of soul that is so admirable. How can a person who 
has just been lying to some one, or cheating him, 
face you with a square, honest look in his eyes, and 
talk to you frankly and fairly? No, something of that 
furtive, mean, sneaking nature that belongs to cheaters 
and to double-dealers, will inevitably cling to him 
wherever he goes, and in whatever he does. It will, 
after a time, become impossible for him to do anything 
directly, everything must be accomplished by circui¬ 
tous methods; the short, straight, honest path will 
invariably be deserted for the sake of the questionable 
pleasure he finds in traveling a crooked one. 

It is only by virtue and the doing of our duty that 


362 ' - DUTY. 

we can be happy. There is no pleasure that can be 
compared with that of a consciousness that we have 
done right, performed our whole duty, in any given 
case; especially when in so doing, we have been 
obliged to surmount great obstacles and overcome 
many temptations. Such an act raises our own self- 
respect, and makes us feel stronger and better. 

“There’s life alone in duty done, 

And rest alone in striving,” 

says Whittier, and the good old Quaker poet never 
said anything truer or nobler. Here is a pleasure 
which never palls, but which is as fresh in old age 
as in youth — the joy in duty done. The boy or 
girl at school is never so happy as after a day of 
hard, earnest work, an honest attempt to perform 
the day’s whole duty. So, the man or woman is 
happiest when he or she can look back in the even¬ 
ing over a day unsullied by any wrong act, and all 
has been done that should have been done. 



4 


1 




OF 




LTHOUGH human obligation, or duty, does 
not naturally divide itself into parts, it will 
appear that our obligations take three 
forms; we owe duties in three separate 
places: we owe them to our Creator, to 
ourselves, and to other people. Yet it must 
always be remembered that these branches into which 
our duties run are so closely related to each other that 
we cannot fully discharge the duties due in one place 
while neglecting those in another. 

The Creator has placed us here upon the earth, 
surrounded us with everything that could be needed 
for our comfort, pleasure, or advancement; given us 
dominion, and power to enforce that dominion, over 
whatever else than man inhabits the earth; granted us 
free use of the four great elements, earth, air, water and 
fire, which intelligence has transformed into so many 
powerful servants; and more than all else, he has given 
to us the lordliest faculties and powers possessed by 
any creature. Now, what does he ask in return? Evi¬ 
dently that we shall use and improve these powers 
and advantages so bountifully bestowed upon us. The 
familiar parable of the talents will teach a lesson here. 

The master was pleased with the conduct of the ser- 

363 
















ANALYSIS OF DUTY. 


3^4 

vants who, having received five and two talents, brought 
back ten and four respectively; whereas he repri¬ 
manded the one who simply returned the amount given 
him. So the maker of us all will be, I imagine, best 
pleased with him who shall by use have doubled or 
trebled the power given him; while the one who buries 
his natural faculties in the earth, and never strives to 
improve them, will be reprimanded as a slothful and 
dishonest servant who has sadly failed to perform his 
duties and discharge his debt. We owe duties to our¬ 
selves, because it is to our evident interest and advan¬ 
tage that we should advance and grow in power. The 
very acme of power of all kinds is plainly what it 
would be most desirable that we should reach. Clearly,, 
then, it is otir duty to ourselves to make the utmost 
use of those faculties which we have received from 
nature, and to exercise and cultivate them until they 
have attained the highest strength of which they are 
capable. 

Our duty of making the most of ourselves as a way 
of paying our debt to the world, stands on clear, 
strong ground. For many centuries the world has 
been at work producing comforts and conveniences 
which are enjoyed mainly by those who live after the 
time of the immediate devisers of them. It is so 
working now. New comforts are constantly being 
thought out. Society furnishes schools to educate our 
children; prisons and officers to protect us from 
the criminal classes — all sorts of labor-saving, pleasure¬ 
giving safety and increasing appliances are about our 



ANALYSIS OF DUTY. 


365 


doors. All these \ve constantly employ, and profit 
by. Certainly now, in return for all these blessings 
which we enjoy at the hand of society, we must owe 
it something — and what? The answer is not far 
below the surface. Since society is doing all it can 
for our good, plainly our duty in return must be to do 
all we can for its good; which is, at the same time, 
the best we can do for ourselves, namely, do the best 
we can with our powers, use them in the right, with 
all the energy we possess, and thereby raise them to 
their highest strength. This is all we can do, and it 
is little enough — the efforts of an individual to balance 
the efforts of a million,. dead and living, hard-working 
philanthropists, besides all the uncounted millions of 
those whose contributions to the world’s progress 
have been slight, or made altogether, from selfish 
motives. But, if everyone; nay, if one half of the 
people of the world, would do their duty, honestly 
and faithfully, our progress toward the ‘'golden goal” 
Yve aim at would be immeasurably smoother and 
more rapid. 

We cannot in any manner escape from duty. The 
hermit who withdraws himself from society, and refuses 
to partake of the advantages offered him by the world, 
may seemingly relieve himself in this way of the duties 
he owes to society in return for its favors. He may, 
perhaps, acting in the double capacity of debtor and 
creditor, set himself free from all obligations to himself. 
But supposing both these to be possible — whether 
they are, may well be doubted — he cannot get rid 





ANALYSIS OF DUTY. 


366 

of the duties he owes to his Creator. That debt 
has already been contracted and can be discharged 
only by a life of honest toil and endeavor; and as 
the duty to the Creator, to himself and to the world 
is the same, whatever way he turns he cannot escape 
that great duty, which includes all others, of the 
best use and highest improvement of all his powers. 
No steps he can take will interfere with that in the 
slightest degree, and to neglect it is a crime against 
his Maker, against himself, and against his fellow-men. 

THEORIES OF THE RIGHT. 

There have been many theories concerning the 
highest good and the supreme rule of right — all 
containing some elements of truth, and all leading to 
nearly the same final results. One'of the most com¬ 
mon ideas is that advanced so long ago by Epicurus: 
that “happiness is our being’s end and aim.” This 
does away with right altogether, and leaves nothing 
but expediency to be considered. The question is 
no longer “Is it right?” but “Will it pay?” I think 
it has appeared and will appear in the course of these 
pages, that the greatest amount of happiness will, in 
the end, at least, always flow from right action. But 
to make pleasure our aim, and bend all things to it, 
is to crown selfishness king of life, and to stifle 
many of the noblest impulses of our nature. Our 
very charity would proceed, not from any desire to 
better the condition of our fellow-men, but simply 
from the pain of living in contact with people in 



THEORIES OF THE RIGHT. 


367 


distress. If we refrain from trespassing upon the 
rights of others, it is not from any sense of duty or 
right, but merely because such a course could 'pro¬ 
duce more pain than pleasure. Although this system 
leads, in the right hands, to the same practical 
results as the others, I cannot think it either the 
noblest, or the safest. 

Another very common idea is, that the intuitive 
knowledge of right and wrong, commonly called con¬ 
science, is the highest law of right; that every one 
knows intuitively what is right and what is not, and 
that in all questions of right and wrong he should 
trust his conscience, and seek no other guide. All 
this is, to a great extent, true, and yet conscience 
hardly deserves the praise of infallibility. It depends 
too much upon the education. The Hindu mother 
throws her child into the Ganges river as an offer- 
ing to the gods. Many races have sacrificed human 
beings to their various deities. Dissenters, or here¬ 
tics, as the fanaticism of the age styled them, were 
tortured in the most fiendish ways, and burned at 
the stake, only a few centuries ago, on account of 
their theological opinions. To this day some of the 
people in Mexico inflict the severest of punishment 
upon themselves, and for no other especial reason 
than as an annual mark of their repentance for the 
wrongs they have done during the year. All this 
is the work of mistaken conscience. It is evident 
that conscience is not alone a very safe guide unless 
we strive constantly to increase our knowledge of 


ANALYSIS OF DUTY. 


368 

right and wrong, and thus enlighten the judgment 
and educate the conscience aright. 

ALL DUTIES ONE. 

It was indicated a page or two back that the 
duties we owe to the Creator, to ourselves, and to 
the world, are not separate duties, but only one grand 
obligation by which we are bound in all three quarters, 
namely, the obligation to make the best possible use 
of all our faculties, and thereby to raise them to the 
highest degree of power which they are capable of 
reaching. He who earnestly and honestly does this, 
striving after perfection with his whole soul, will rarely 
go amiss in the particular affairs of every-day life. 

But, though all duties are thus embodied in one 
great duty, they meet us practically as separate duties; 
and while those which are owed to other people are 
owed also to ourselves and to the Creator, and vice 
versa , yet on the surface certain ones appear to be 
particularly due to ourselves, certain others to the 
world, etc., and for convenience’ sake, we will follow 
these surface distinctions and make an arbitrary clas¬ 
sification of duties thus: duties to ourselves, duties 
to other people, duties growing out of the relation¬ 
ship of home, duties to government, and duties to 
our Creator. In this way they will be discussed, only 

mentioning once more that the classification has no 

\ 

scientific basis, but is one of convenience alone, as 
each and every one of them arise equally out of the 
nature of man. 


Mental and Physical Nature of Man. (For Complete Analysis, see pages 24 and 25.) 


\ 


ANALYSIS OF DUTY. 



/'Duties to Self. 


> Duty. 


Self-Protection. 


Self-Torture. 
Suicide. 

Protection of Body.! 

Licentiousness. 
Health. 

' Avarice. 

Ambition. 

Anger. 

(protection of Mind.( ™ e sy j enceand 

Vanity. [Servility. 
False Honor. 
Hypocrisy. 

Of the Body. 

'Common Sense. 
Knowledge. 

Taste. 

Of the Mind. ■{ The Sensibilities. 

The Will. 

Perseverance. 
Self-Knowledge. [Heroism. 

Industr y- [ness. 

[■Honorable Shrewd- 

f [Honesty in Business.-^ Equal Chances. 

Honesty, -i Mental Honesty. [Pay as You Go. 
[Universal Honesty. 

Sympathy. 

Gratitude. 


Self-Culture. - 


Duties to Others. < 


Courtesy. , politeness. 


False Pride and Insolence. 


I 

[May we ever Falsify. 

Truthfulness. -| Evil Speaking. 

[Exaggeration. 

rhnritv i Where and How to Give, 
k^narity. j p or gi veness and Mercy. 

r f Proper Choice of Persons. 

Of Lover and Sweetheart. J , Love. 

[Mutual Honesty. 


Duties in the 
Relations 
of Home. 


Of Husband and Wife. 


Of Parents and Children. 


'Fidelity and Honesty. 

Patience. 

Continued Affection. 

Sharing Cares and Joys. 

„ Mutual Kindness. 

Education of Head and Heart. 
Mutual Respect. 

Discipline. 

Mutual Love and Kindness. 


Of Brothers and Sisters. 


Forbearance and Kindness. 
Love and Unity. 

[Employers. 

[Respect andKindness of 

Of Masters and Servants. Obedience and Faithfulness. 

[Honesty of Employes. 


jDf Teachers and Pupils. 


The Teacher’s Work. 
Character-Building. 

Discipline. 

Mutual Kindness and Respect. 


[ Obedience. 

~ a ~ . I Financial Support. 

Duties to Government, -j Support in 

[Moral Support. 


.Duties to the Creator. 
























TO 



m 



MAN owes to himself two princi¬ 
pal duties, namely: self-protection 
and self-culture, both of which in¬ 
volve a number of other important 
things; and besides these, there are, 
notably, two other important duties 
which every individual owes to himself. 
They are self-knowledge and industry. A 
full presentation of our duties to self may 
be seen at a glance, in the upper por¬ 
tion of the complete analysis of Duty, on 
page 369. 

If man’s one great end, or duty, is to strive after 
perfection, he evidently cannot allow any of the facul¬ 
ties of his present life to decay; and not only that, 
he must be constantly improving them. The young 
person who speaks of his education as being completed, 
has just begun this task. Whatever may be his age 
or advancement in life, man’s first two duties to self 
are self-protection and self-culture. The first of these 


370 
































SELF-TORTURE. 


371 


will now be examined, and, for convenience of refer¬ 
ence, its analysis is presented here : 


r Protection 

of Body. 


Self-Torture. 
Suicide. 
Self-Defense. 
Intemperance. 
Licentiousness. 
I Health. 


Self-Protection. < 

♦ 


Protection 

of Mind. 

V 


" Avarice. 

Ambition. 

Anger. 

Jealousy. 

Independence and Servility. 
Vanity. 

False Honor. 

^ Hypocrisy. 


SELF-TORTURE. 

If the position already several times stated be a 
true one, namely, that the body, the mind, and the 
soul, or spirit, are three parts of one man, each essen¬ 
tial to his existence, and the healthful activity of each 
necessary to the well-being of the others, we are at 
once led to the conclusion, that to wilfully injure any 
part of the three-fold system is wrong, working against 
our highest duty and noblest destiny. It is wronging 
ourselves, and it is wronging him who put us here 
to work and improve, and who will, as most people 
believe, some day demand an account of the talents 
intrusted to our care. Besides, it is wronging the 








3/2 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


world, which has a claim upon every man who lives 
in it. You enjoy the accumulated knowledge and 
power of all ages. You are clothed, fed, housed, and 
warmed by the efforts of the world; by its exertions 
you are furnished with the means of culture; and the 
world has a right to expect in return, that you should 
reach the highest point possible to you, that you 
should reward its efforts by efforts of your own, that 
you should give it something for the much it has 

given you/ You are defrauding it then, if you do 

* 

not put forth strenuous exertions for your own bet¬ 
terment and that of society, or if you, in any way, 
wilfully incapacitate yourself for such exertions. 

It would seem from this that the devotees of the 
middle ages, when they so horribly torturpd their 
bodies, were not merely unwise, but worse; they were 
wronging themselves, wronging the world, and wrong¬ 
ing the God whom they adored and thought to honor 
in this mistaken way. Far better, had they spent their 
time in cultivating all their powers to the highest 
degree, and giving the world some benefit of the 
freedom from petty cares which they enjoyed by its 
bounty. Who can compute the good they might have 
done, had their ideas been less contracted, their culture 
broader and more liberal, and their united energies 
expended in ways more worthy of them ? The world 
would not have groped so long in the Cimmerian night 
of ignorance. The dark ages would have been ages 
refulgent with light. The pages of history would not 
be blotted with the unsightly names of the inquisition 


SELF-TORTURE. 


o/o 

and the star chamber, the rack and the stake. The 
thousand tales of political and religious cruelty would 
not now have to be told. Still, if a guiltless wrong¬ 
doer be a possibility, these men were such; for they 
honestly believed they were doing the right, and they 
were in earnest about it — a great thing in itself. And, 
moreover, they did a vast amount of good, more good 
than harm, great as the latter certainly was. 

If it is wrong to torture the body from the pure 

* 

and lofty motives of religion, it is surely much more 
wrong to torture it from the comparatively trivial 
motives of dress. I do not propose here to enter 
into a long homily upon the evils of fashionable 
dress, but only to point out the fact that it is some¬ 
thing worse than foolishness, if we so clothe our¬ 
selves as to interfere with the functions of any part 
of the body. It is only too true that thousands 
upon thousands of persons are to-day reaping the 
bitter fruits of their own and their parent’s folly 
and — shall we call it crime? Think of it, mothers; 
It is a wrong done not merely to the somewhat 
vague world at large, but to your own children, 
if for the sake of attaining a fashionable form, or 
appearing clad in fashionable attire, you weaken and 
dwarf your physical system. 

Another way which people, and especially Ameri¬ 
can people, have of torturing themselves and crippling 
their whole beings, is overwork. We are a young 
nation, without very much of a past, but with a mag¬ 
nificent future ; and each individual of us is anxious 




374 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


that a large portion of that prospective future great¬ 
ness shall be his. We are passing through a regular 
“storm and stress” period of our national life — a 
“storm and stress” of business. Not a single hour 
out of the twenty-four is sacred from toil. The over¬ 
tasked business man racks his mind and body from 
early in the morning till late at night, keeping them 
at a constant tension that cannot be other than most 
destructive to their health and vitality. The house¬ 
wife who is trying to support a large family and 
keep up an appearance of wealth, on small means, 
rises at five or six, and rarely closes her eyes before 
midnight. Are you surprised that she is a poor, 
broken-down, dispirited creature ? She has no time, 
or rather she takes no time, to cultivate her mind 
and soul, or even to revive the exhausted energies 
of her body. Enjoyment is a word of whose mean¬ 
ing she has not the slightest conception. We do 
wrong to live at such a terrible rate. Money-getting 
is not the only thing to be attended to in this world. 
Properly it is but a small part of our work, and we 
ought not to let it thus usurp our whole life, and 
drive out of our minds things which are much nobler. 

With a great many it is not the great amount 
of work they do, but the great worry about it that 
wears out their very life. It is not easy to exagge¬ 
rate the evils of continued and excessive excitement. 
Hugh Miller, the distinguished geologist, died by 
his own hand, as the effect of too much work. The 
following is a contemporary account of the circum- 



DUTIES TO SELF. 


375 


stances: “He possessed an extraordinary mind; but 
gifted and capable as it was, he overstrained and 
overtasked it, became insane for the moment, and 
committed the fatal act which hurried him into 
eternity. He left behind him a brief letter to his 
wife, in which he said that ‘his brain was on fire,’ 
and that ‘a fearful dream was upon him.’ Fearful, 
indeed, for it maddened, and induced him to place a 
pistol to his own breast. It appears that he had long 
been engaged on an elaborate work, entitled ‘The 
Testimony of the Rocks.’ At this he had labored 
for days and months, and sometimes, indeed, until 
long after midnight. Thus, at last, his intellect gave 
evidence of disorder ; he became the prey of strange 
fears, and fancied that his faculties were failing him. 
It is stated that a few weeks before his death, the 
light was seen to glimmer through his window at an 
early hour in the morning, and that his untiring labor 
began to tell upon his mental health. He had always 
been somewhat apprehensive of being attacked by 
footpads, and had carried loaded firearms about his 
person. Latterly, having occasion sometimes to return 
to Portobello from Edinburgh, at unseasonable hours, 
he had furnished himself with a revolver. But now, 
to all his old fears as to attacks upon his person, there 
was added an exciting and overmastering impression 
that his house, and especially that museum, the fruit 
of so much care, which was contained in a separate 
outer building, were exposed to the assaults of 
burglars. He read all the recent stories of house 


376 DUTIES TO SELF. 

robberies. He believed that one night lately, an 
actual attempt to break in upon his museum had been 
made. Visions of ticket-of-leave men, prowling about 
his premises, haunted him by day and by night. The 
revolver, which lay nightly near him, was not enough. 
A broad-bladed dagger was kept beside it, while 
behind him, at his bed-head, a claymore stood ready 
at hand. About a week before his fatal end, a new 
and more aggravated feature of cerebral disorder 
showed itself in sudden and singular sensations in his 
head. They came on only after lengthened intervals. 
They did not last long, but were intensely violent. 
The terrible idea that his brain was deeply and hope¬ 
lessly diseased, that his mind was on the verge of 
ruin, took hold of him, and stood out before his eye 
in all that appalling magnitude in which such an 
imagination as his alone could picture it. And thus, 
at .last, he corrected some proofs of his last volume, 
went to his chamber and took a bath, and then, no 
doubt, tortured, bewildered, and agonized by the 
horrid imaginings, that had so lately beset him, he 
seized a loaded revolver, placed it to his breast, and 
was, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, in another 
world.” 

SUICIDE. 

Suicide is only heightened injury done to our¬ 
selves. It is wrong for us to neglect to maintain 
our powers in full health ; it is surely more wrong 
to cut them off altogether. There is something 

o o 


SUICIDE. 


^ »~T 

3 / / 

fascinating - in suicide, and in some ages it has been 
regarded as honorable to leave the world in a fit of 
righteous indignation against it, or to refuse to battle 
longer with the troubles that assail one here. 

Has not a man the right to remove himself from a 
world of sorrow, if he so desires? No moral right 
whatever. It certainly accords much better with the 
exalted nature of man that he should struggle on, 
doing always the best that he can, than that he should 
weakly give up the fight and retreat to he knows 
not what. I like that saying of rugged Scotch Car¬ 
lyle, that man “ is born to expend every particle of 
strength that God Almighty has given him, in doing 
the work he finds he is fit for; to stand up to it 
to the last breath of life, and do his best.” 

Speaking of the prevalence of suicide, a promi¬ 
nent daily paper said recently: “Unless universal 
insanity be admitted as the cause for self-destruction, 
it is difficult to conceive of any grosser form of self¬ 
ishness. A man deliberately and wilfully rushes away 
from financial troubles that his wife and children 
may bear the brunt, or a woman puts an end to 
herself that she may escape the misery of her spoiled 
existence. In both cases the trouble, with a heavy 
addition, is thrown upon those surviving. Even if 
the suicide leaves his family in comfortable circum¬ 
stances he cannot take the life stain from his 
children. Neither time, nor generosity, nor custom, 
can efface this.” True; it is cowardice to die by 
our own hand, and leave those who look to us for 


378 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


protection to face difficulties and troubles that we 
thus refuse to meet. 

“’Tis not courage, when the darts of chance 
Are thrown against our state, to turn our backs, 

And basely run to death; as if the hand 
Of heaven and* nature had lent nothing else 
T’ oppose against mishap, but loss of life, 

Which is to fly, and not to conquer it.” 

SELF-DEFENSE. 

Closely connected with the subject of suicide, is 
that of self-defense. Has a man the right to defend 
himself, or must he literally turn the other cheek? 
It seems that if you have not the right to injure 
yourself, no one else has that right, certainly, and 
you may properly prevent him from doing so, should 
he attempt it. But the right of self-defense does 
not imply that of vengence. “ Vengeance is mine, 
saith the Lord.” You may go only so far as is, in 
your best judgment, necessary in order to protect 
yourself, but to that full extent you may properly 
go, even if it should require you to take the life of 
your assailant. Such is the decision of the laws of 
our land. 

But of far more frequent occurrence is the ruin of 
the whole man by the various passions. Body, mind 
and spirit go down in the general wreck, victims 
of the overmastering force of unregulated impulse. 
Though the three elements are equally necessary to 
a full manhood, they have not and should not have 


SELF-DEFENSE. 


37 9 


equal authority. The reasoning and moral faculties 
ought to be supreme, and the body should be kept 
in constant subjection to them. There is no properly 
organized man or woman who cannot, by a little 
exercise of the Will power, keep all his or her appe¬ 
tites and passions under full control. The person 
who habitually falls into ungovernable anger, or who- 
allows his appetite for stnong drink to rule him, has but 
himself to blame for his misfortunes. A little resolute 
firmness before it was too late would have secured 
to him complete command over the rebellious pas¬ 
sions. Whoever ventures to disregard this injunc¬ 
tion of nature is certain to reap the whirlwind from 
sowing such seed. Who is there that cannot call 
to mind some acquaintance who has brought down 
destruction upon his head by undue indulgence of 
some part of his animal nature? 

INTEMPERANCE. 

The blear eye, the unsteady hand, the tottering 
form, the halting tongue, are familiar to everybody. 
They speak a well-known language, and tell of the 
general devastation of bright prospects and brilliant 
powers. Some idea of the extent of the ruin wrought 
by intemperate use of strong drink may be had from 
the following extract from a sermon delivered in New 
York city, October 15, 1882: “There are one million 
drunkards in the United States to-day; sixty thousand 
of the people annually die drunkards; one hundred 
thousand men and women are annually sent to prison 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


330 

through this iniquity; two hundred thousand chil¬ 
dren thrown on the charity of the world by alcohol¬ 
ism. Judge Allison says that fully four fifths of the 
crime committed in this country is committed under 
the influence of strong drink. In Canada, out of 
twenty-eight thousand two hundred and eighty-four 
commitments to jail, twenty-one thousand two hun¬ 
dred and thirty-six committed their crime under the 
influence of strong drink. Dr. Harris, inspector of 
the prisons of New York state, says that eighty-five 
out of every one hundred cases of all the crime is 
the result of intemperance. There are thirty thou¬ 
sand maniacs and idiots now as a result of intemper¬ 
ance. England pays four hundred thousand dollars 
y'early for alcoholic insane paupers. Mrs. Comstock, 
the Quaker missionary, says that out of one hundred 
and fifteen thousand prisoners one hundred and five 
thousand were incarcerated by. their intemperance. 
It is estimated that ninety-nine one-hundredths of 
the children not going to school in this country are 
the children of drunkards. The cost of, and ruin 
by, rum in this country, is one billion two hundred 
millions of dollars annually. In Edwards county, 
Illinois, it was decided, twenty-seven years ago, that 

they would have no rum in the county, and in 

% 

twenty-five years only one person was sent to the 
penitentiary, and he committed a crime while drunk 
from rum got in another county. The most of the 
time the jail has been empty. There are only two 
or three paupers in all the county. The tax is 


INTEMPERANCE. 


38 r 

thirty-two per cent lower than the neighboring coun¬ 
ties, though their tax-rolls show more property than 
any other county in the state of equal size. The 
court in that county sits three days in the year.” 

But even worse than the destruction of so many 
common lives and the production of so much crime,, 
is the sad havoc which the passion for stimulants 

of various kinds makes among the most brilliant, 

intellects. Edgar _ Allen Poe, one of the finest of 
American poets, died of delirium tremens at the 
early age of thirty-eight. Richard Parson, one of 
the very greatest of scholars, had such a raging 
thirst that he would drink almost any thing. Spirits 
of wine for the lamp, ink, and an embrocation, are 
among the draughts he is said to have swallowed. 
After a banquet, he would pour the dregs of wine 

from the glasses of the guests into one glass and 

drink them. He died aged forty-eight. Alexander 
the Great, 

“The youth who all things but himself subdued,” 

after conquering so much of the world as was then 

known to the Greeks, died from the effects of too 

% 

much wine at a banquet, aged only thirty-two. Robert 
Burns, the greatest poet of Scotland, died at thirty- 
•seven, having 1 shortened his life and rendered him- 

self and his family miserable by a too free use of 

\ 

liquor. Coleridge and De Quincy, two of the greatest 
literary men of their time, destroyed their magnificent 
powers of mind by the use of opium. 


382 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


No man has a right thus to defeat the highest 
purpose of his existence, to cheat the world out of 
the services which he owes it, to subject those who 
are dependent upon him to the ills of poverty, and 
to bring down disgrace and obloquy upon the inno¬ 
cent ones whose fate is united to his by the bonds 
of law or nature. 

LICENTIOUSNESS. 

Frightful as are the evils of intemperance, enormous 
as is the misery which it entails upon the world each 
year, there is another vice, equally wide-spread, which 
is said by competent judges to be even more destruc¬ 
tive of life and happiness. No one can form the 
faintest conception of the horrors of licentiousness. 
Who has not walked the streets of our large cities, 
and seen there the haggard faces of men and women, 
old though young, weak and worn by debauchery, 
almost breathing corruption upon the air. Nothing 
is holy or pure to them, or if it is, it only excites their 
hungry desire to pollute it. As you pass them, they 
fasten their eyes upon you with a brazen stare, and 
you see their features, loathsome with disease and the 
evidences of crime. Nor is that all: this vice breaks 
in upon the family circle, gnaws like a canker at the 
happiness of home, parts husband and wife, parent 
and child, asunder. How many homes has it destroyed ! 
It has entered with unblushing face many a royal 
palace, and whole nations have felt its curse. The 
English Reformation with its long series of cruel per- 


LICENTIOUSNESS. 


seditions on both sides, began just here. It enters 
the school and the church. No place is so sacred 
as to be safe from its pestilential invasions, and no 
more damning proof of the debasing effect of allowing 
the animal desires (see last paragraph, page 291) to 
rule men can be found. 

4 

HEALTH. 

“ Let all men,” says Carlyle, “if they can manage 
it, contrive to be healthy! He who in what cause 
soever sinks into pain and disease, let him take 
thought of it; let him know well that it is not good 
he has arrived at yet, but surely evil — may, or may 
not be, on the way toward good. There are many 
other passages in his works which show the high value 
he placed upon health, a blessing which he, unfortu¬ 
nately, did not enjoy. Otherwise, some of the vinegar, 
which seems to have offended people so much since 
his death, might have been left out of his works and 
private papers ; and, what was of far more importance 
to him, he might have lived a much happier life, and 
contributed more than he probably did to the enjoy¬ 
ment of those about him. 

Truly, health is a grand thing, and its value cannot 
be overestimated. (See page 43.) It is the basis 
of all good things; as Sir William Temple said, it 
“ is the soul that animates all enjoyments of life, 
which fade and are tasteless, if not dead, without it. 
One of the best foundations you can give your 
children, for a life of usefulness and happiness, is a 



384 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


healthy body. Perfect physical health induces mental 
and moral health and strength. If you would give 
to the world men and women sound in judgment, pure 
in thought, with loving hearts, add to culture whole¬ 
some food, regular habits, plenty of sleep and out-door 
exercise. An unimpaired digestion is a fortune to 
any child, and is a security for cheerfulness, and 
usually a long, happy, and useful life. Therefore, as 
you value such a boon for your child, see that in 
youth he does not lose it all by indulgence in candy, 
pickles, cake and pastry, and sitting up till mamma’s 
bedtime.” 

If, as has been said so often in these pages, good 
bodily health is necessary to the highest development 
of the mind and spirit, evidently it must be wrong to 
do that which will injure the health of the body. He 
who recklessly exposes his system — without sufficient 
cause — to disease, he who plies the already weary 
body with tasks that it ought not perform, he who 
neglects the matters of diet, exercise, pure air, and 
other things essential to health, is, then, unwise, and 
more than that, he is guilty ; for he is wilfully going 
contrary to his highest destiny and duty. 

AVARICE. 

Although intemperance and licentiousness probably 
do more harm than any others, there are many affec¬ 
tions and desires which, when in excess, become 
passions and exercise a very great influence for evil. 
A passion of any kind will tear a man to pieces 




AVARICE. 


335 


and make a general wreck of him, if given free sway 
for a little time. As one of the greatest thinkers, 
Goethe, has truly said, “ Unconditioned activity, of 
whatever kind it may be, finally leads to bankruptcy.” 
These powerful impulses must be kept in check, and 
not allowed to usurp all the faculties of the mind. 
A perfect man must be able to maintain an equilib¬ 
rium between his opposite natures, not allowing any 
one of his tendencies to wax unduly and dispropor¬ 
tionately strong at the expense of others, and finally 
to crush them out. 

We have already seen in the section on that sub¬ 
ject (page 298), that the love of gold is one of the 
strongest passions, and one of those most likely to 
gain complete control over the whole being, bending 
all other feelings and powers to its purposes. The 
typical miser, with palsied hand, and cowering form, 
gloating over the money-bags which he is afraid to 
call his own, is perhaps not a common sight. But 
every day we meet those whose avarice has gone far 
enough to strangle every finer feeling of their natures, 
and crush out even the perception of beauty and 
grandeur. They are cold, hard, stern, unsympathetic 
and unmerciful. To them, no color is beautiful save 
the yellow glint of gold, no sound has in it so much 
of music as the merry clink and jingle of coin. 1 hey 
have no hopes or aspirations other than for more 
money. Their only conception of right is the legal 
right which is theirs to grind the last cent out of a 
sick and starving debtor; of this, their understanding 
25 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


386 

is perfect. “ More money, more money; grant me 
power to get more money,” is their only prayer. I 
think no reader will find much trouble in deciding 
for himself whether such a life is right or wrong, 
whether or not it is living- in accordance with that 
highest duty which has been pointed out. 

Closely connected with avarice is the passion for 
gambling, so strong in some people. Rev. C. C. 
Colton, author of “ Lacon,” was a pastor in England. 
He became addicted to gambling and extravagance. 
He was a successful gamester, and is said to have 
made at play one hundred and twenty-five thousand 
dollars, in two years, in Paris. He finally died by 
his own hand. Reni Guido, one of the most dis¬ 
tinguished Italian painters, died broken in spirit and 
burdened with poverty as a result of his passionate 
love for the gaming table. 

An inordinate love of money is constantly sending 
its miserable victims to the insane asylum and to 
the lonely grave of the suicide. 

AMBITION. 

Ambition, or the desire for superiority or power, 
(see pages 295 and 300), when in such excess as 
to become - a passion, acts in something the same 
way as avarice, but is perhaps not quite so ruinous 
to the person himself, though more so to others. 
Its effect is to harden the heart and shut its doors 
against all gentler feelings. It makes its victim heed¬ 
less of the happiness of others. He does not hesi- 


AMBITION. 


387 


tate to crush anyone who stands in his way whenever 
he can do so. He governs his actions by the prin¬ 
ciple that the end justifies the means; and what foul 
means he will use to accomplish the end of personal 
advancement for himself, every one knows who is at 
all acquainted with the methods of politicians in this 
or any other country. Slander, libel, bribery, false 

•v 

promises and simulated friendship — these are a part 
and a fair sample of the regular stock in trade of 
too many men engaged in political life. It is so to 
some extent in the other fields of ambition, though 
I believe it is nowhere else carried to such an excess 
as in politics. Such a life of hard-hearted selfish¬ 
ness certainly cannot be a fitting one for man, with 
his natural sympathy and love for his fellows. 

Moreover, disappointed ambition, and in the nature 
of things the ambition of most men must be disap¬ 
pointed, is perhaps the most effective means known for 
souring men’s tempers and making them disagreeable 
and hateful to themselves and others. We have all 
met such people and have been afflicted by them. 
They have failed, perhaps, to receive some office upon 
which they had fixed their minds, and which they 
thought justly due them, on account of their faithful 
party service, or for some other reason ; and now they 
are querrulous and fault-finding, complaining of their 
party, of their friends, and of almost everybody and 
everything else. They seem to have forgotten their 
high dignity as men, and to have given themselves up 
absolutely to the weak, foolish spite they feel against 



388 DUTIES TO SELF. 

the world on account of their failure. Some distin¬ 
guished men are supposed to have died from the effects 
of their bitter disappointment when defeated in some 
of their ambitious schemes. Such is the power ambi¬ 
tion wields when it once gets full control of the mind. 
The only right thing we can do is to keep it in proper 
subjection to the reason and the moral faculties. 

ANGER. 

“To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon 
ourselves,” says Pope. I suppose there is no other 
passion which can do so much harm in so little time, 
as anger in its various forms. It seems to wrench the 
body and the mind quite out of their original and 
proper shape. The face is twisted and distorted, the 
brow is drawn into great furrows and ridges, the eyes 
gleam with an unnatural light. Plutarch thinks that if 
a man could see himself “so unnaturally disguised and 
disordered,” it would go a great way toward dispelling 
his anger; and he himself would not at all take it ill 
if, when in that condition, some friend should hold up 
before him a glass that he might see the horrible 
distortion of his face. 

But the deformity which we see in the face, great 
as it is, is only a faint reflection of what is going on 
within. 

“The wildest ills that darken life, 

Are rapture to the bosom’s strife; 

The tempest in its blackest form 
Is beauty to the bosom’s storm; 


ANGER. 


389 


The ocean lashed to fury loud, 

Its high wave mingling with the cloud, 

Is peaceful, sweet serenity, 

To anger’s dark and stormy sea.” 

So terrible is the strain which anger puts upon 
the mind, that it is probable that a person could not 
live more than a very few hours if kept constantly 
wrought up to the highest pitch of anger; or if his 

life did not fall a sacrifice to passion, his reason cer- 

- \ 

tainly would, and he would be driven into permanent 
madness. It is extremely fortunate for mankind that 
anger in its worst form is very short-lived, never lasting 
longer than a few minutes; after a short time, it either 
dies out, or settles into the quieter form of hate, which 
is a lasting passion, but not nearly so wearing upon 
the whole nervous system as anger. 

JEALOUSY. 

“Thou jealousy, 

Almighty tyrant of the human mind, 

Who canst at will unsettle the calm brain, 

O’erturn the scaled heart, and shake the man 
Through all his frame with tempest and distraction.” 

In its effects upon the person unfortunate enough 
to be subject to its afflictions, jealousy is very like 
anger. It is as if a tornado had passed through 
the soul, and with its terrible power had wrecked, 
and twisted, and blown to fragments all the facul¬ 
ties of the man. (For the natural origin of jealousy, 
see page 287.) Who that has ever read or heard 
Shakespeare’s wonderful play, “ Othello,” can fail to 


390 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


realize how fearful is the power of jealousy! A 
strong, brave man, duped and maddened by his 
blind passion, until with his own hand he plunges 
his sword into the bosom of his innocent wife. And 
scarcely a day passes that the papers do not contain 
an account of just such a tragedy enacted in real life. 

And here let it be once again repeated that the 
man or woman who wishes to reach a full manhood 
or womanhood must, and can, keep all these passions 
in check; make them subject to those higher facul¬ 
ties whose proper sphere it is to rule and guide our 
lives. When kept in the state of dependence which 
belongs to them, they are useful, and as essential 
as any other elements to the completeness of man¬ 
hood or womanhood. But when allowed to run wild, 
they are like the great fires that sometimes rage 
through our northern forests, burning farm houses 
and villages, as well as the uninhabited wilderness; 
fierce and uncontrollable, they rush along, sweeping 
everything in their mad course, burning up not only 
the trash in our natures, but fastening their alb 
devouring flames also upon the noblest powers that 
we have; and when they have gone by, we find 
that nothing but ashes and cinders are left of the 
life that once was strong and fair. 

o 

INDEPENDENCE AND SERVILITY. 

The spiritual in humanity is degraded whenever 
it submits to have ends imposed upon it, and yields 
itself blindly to the dictates of another. Self-posses- 


INDEPENDENCE AND SERVILITY. 391 

sion and self-direction are essential to virtue; and 
the obligation to take upon himself the control of his 
own conduct, and sustain his own spiritual worthiness, 
is inseparable from man. No one can rightfully give 
up this responsibility to another, and no one can right¬ 
fully assume it for another. The true dignity of man’s 
spiritual being can be sustained in no other manner 
than by proposing to himself his own ends, and resist¬ 
ing to the last extremity all interference with this 
inalienable prerogative. There can be no question 
allowed as to whether he may not live longer, or avoid 
more care, by allowing his spirit to be ruled by some 
other agency than himself; the assent to such dictation 
is a renunciation of the prerogatives of personality, 
and consenting to become a thing, and thereby an 
attempt to give up the authority of his own rationality, 
than which nothing can be more debasing. It is man 
renouncing his manhood, and willingly taking the 
place of the animal, to be used by others. 

Independence is all that makes one a moral and 
responsible being, it is what makes him a man ; and 
when he consents to yield up his independence, and 
subject himself to the will of another, he is sacrificing 
his manhood, putting himself upon the same level with 
horses and dogs, making out of himself, as has just 
been said in the last paragraph above, a mere thing. 
And yet how many are doing this very thing in one 
form or another! How many make themselves slaves 
to the man of position and power, to public opinion, 
and to fashion ! 


39 2 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


Of course this does not apply to the payment of 
honest debts, as where one man for a certain consider¬ 
ation aerees to do certain things for another, and do 
them in such way as may be desired ; nor does it apply 
to the case of obedience to rightful authority; the 
pupil should obey his teacher, just so far as the teach¬ 
er’s rightful and reasonable authority extends, and 
should do it cheerfully and willingly; the child should 
obey his parents in the same way, and so likewise 
should we all submit to the lawfully constituted gov¬ 
ernment which has dominion over us. Obedience in 
these and like cases is no sacrifice of independence ; 
it is not debasing, but dignifying. 

Servility by its derivation means slavishness, and 
is the extreme opposite of independence. It includes 
all absolute giving up of self into the hands of another 
to do as he pleases with, it includes all cases of fawn¬ 
ing or flattery, and it includes a good many other 
things which the people do without thinking of any 
sacrifice of independence. Thousands upon thousands 
of young men join one or the other of the great polit¬ 
ical parties, having but very little knowledge of the 
principles upon which these parties divide, and for¬ 
ever after that they are Democrats or Republicans, 
as the case may be, and their great pride is that 
they never “scratch a ticket,” but always vote as the 
“ wire-pullers ” of their party dictate. Ignorant and 
servile, no matter how evil and ruinous the principle 
advocated may be, no matter how degraded, dis¬ 
honest and incompetent the candidates, they will 


INDEPENDENCE AND SERVILITY. 393 

vote for them merely because the ticket contain¬ 
ing their names is headed “ Democratic Ticket,” or 
“ Republican Ticket.” Now, in all matters of politics 
these people are mere slaves to the candidates and 
candidate-makers, and they are counted in political 
calculations just as so many horses or cattle would 
be in financial calculations. “ These men are ours,” 
say the “bosses.” 

In similar manner, only it is worse, because it is 
giving into the hands of others the fate of the 
immortal soul —little children, who not only do not, 
but in the nature of things cannot, understand those 
deep and complex questions which underlie all religion, 
or even the simpler and far less important questions 
which divide religious sects, rush into some church 
under the influence of revival excitement, or the 
persuasion of parents or companions, and through 
life they are Methodists, or Catholics, or Presbyterians, 
or Baptists, or whatever else the denomination may 
be. They have stifled their natural right of inquiry 
and investigation, and most of them go through life 
and down to death obeying the behests of their church 
organization, and trusting their souls to doctrines 
concerning the truth of which they have never once 
taken the trouble to satisfy their minds. Is that 
anything but servility in its most dangerous form ? 
To let others do all their thinking upon this most 
important subject of all ! Another exhibition of this 
spirit of servility is to be seen in the strict adherence 
to fashion on the part of untold thousands of men 



394 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


and women. Does it accord with the high dignity of 
true womanhood, that a woman should go beyond her 
means for the sake of wearing clothes that are in 
fashion, that she should sacrifice her health to the 
desire of possessing a fashionable form, that she should 
wear things unbecoming to her particular style of 
beauty — and frequently things that do not beseem 
any woman — that she should give up to the demands 
of dress the time that ought to be spent in cultivating 
her own higher nature, and in caring for her husband 
and children, and promoting her own and their happi¬ 
ness? Is that true womanhood ? Is it consistent with 
true womanhood? Is it anything else but slavery 
to the makers 'of apparel and the contrivers of 
fashion-papers, and to the opinion of those who, like 
herself, are slaves? But dress is by no means the 
only thing that is subject to the whims of capricious 
fashion. Would that it were! 

A mother was reproaching her daughter for not 
having called upon an acquaintance; the reply was 
that they had never been intimate with the family 
in question. “But,” said the mother, “circumstances 
have altered. They have moved into the West End, 
and besides that, they keep a carriage and horses 
now.” Yes; that is it. They may have been the 
most ignorant and uncouth family in the city; their 
lives may have been stained with vice of every kind; 
the money necessary to support a household in the 
West End may have been obtained through the 
most shameful dishonesty; but all these things are 



INDEPENDENCE AND SERVILITY. 


395 


mere trifles; they live in a stylish locality and keep 
a carriage and horses, and that is their sure, pass¬ 
port into “ society, ” for the decree of almighty 
Fashion has gone out to that effect, and all her 
devotees must obey. Thus fashion presumes to dic¬ 
tate the clothes we shall wear, the company we shall 
keep, the food we shall eat, the houses we shall live 
in, the churches we shall attend, the authors we 
shall admire — everything, in fact. Besides these 
examples given of bowing abjectly to political or 
church dignitaries, and to fashion, there are innu¬ 
merable species of flunkyism which prevail all over 
the world. How many ^cringing, fawning, flattering 
nothings crowd around every man of influence and 
power! It is baseness, unrelieved by anything that 
is good or great, thus to surrender your manhood, 
and put yourself upon the level of the dog that 
licks the hand of its patron. If there is one man 
more contemptible than another, it is the one who 
makes himself a slave to others, not because he must, 
or because he wishes to help them, but simply because 
he has not spirit enough to do otherwise. He is 
constantly fawning upon others, loading them down 
with the most sickening flattery, striving by all means 
to gain their attention. If a great or a prominent 
man deigns to notice him, he acts as if he were a 
worm, and would deem it an honor if the great man 
would step on him. Perhaps, after all, he is not far 
wrong-, and it would be an honor for such a worm 
as he to be crushed by the foot of a man of sense 



396 DUTIES TO SELF. 

and spirit. Such conduct seems all the more stange, 
because it must always fail to command the respect of 
the very persons whose good graces are thus courted. 
It is evident that he has not sense enough to under¬ 
stand this truth, and his weakness and folly become 
even a little more pitiful. 

VANITY. 

Vanity, like other forms of servility, grows out of 
an undue desire for the esteem of others (see page 
305), and is one of the most common of the modi¬ 
fied forms of servility. Swift said that a man might 
be too proud to be vain. A man who is truly proud 

and self-sustained is not, and cannot be, vain. Vanity 

• _ 

is always a mark of servility. The person who is 

constantly looking about to see if others do not 
think him handsome or clever, is weak, very weak, 
and must be constantly fed upon the milk of appro¬ 
bation to keep life in him. “Vanity is the fruit of 
ignorance,” says somebody. “ It thrives most in sub¬ 
terranean places, never reached by the air of heaven 
and the light of the sun.” The vain person is prin¬ 
cipally desirious of the esteem of others, and his 
self-esteem is so largely developed that the most 
extravagant professions of admiration for him are 
not doubted for an instant. He and the flatterer 
are well mated. To every one else, flattery is dis¬ 
gusting; to him it is meat and drink. He does not 
perceive any difference between real admiration and 
sham admiration; he measures the depth of feeling 


VANITY. 


39 7 


wholly by the sound of the words which give it 
expression, thinking that the same words mean always 
the same thing, whereas they mean now one thing, 
now another, and again nothing. Hence it is that 
the preposterous words of a wily, unfeeling flatterer 
are as good to him, nay, better, than the sincere 
encouragement of an honest friend. Hence it is, 
also, that he can always be led about, and induced 
to do whatever may be desired of him, by offering 
him the bait of a little false esteem. It might well 
be debated in some village lyceum whether the vain 
man is rather the subject of pity, or of contempt. 
Certain it is, that vanity often destroys prospects 
which might otherwise be brilliant. The tendency 
of the man afflicted with vanity is, after receiving a. 
little applause, to think that he has done as much 
as could be expected of any one man, and that he 
has earned the everlasting gratitude of the world, 
and garnered for himself undying renown; and 
thereupon “he sits down,” as a young preacher 
once rather oddly expressed it in a sermon on idle¬ 
ness, “on the stool of do-nothing,” and there he sits 
henceforth and forever. 

F^LSE HONOR. 

False honor is another manifestation of servility. 
The man who worries himself about what people are 
saying, and wants blood every time he thinks he has 
been insulted, is making himself a slave to public 
opinion. The man who looks to his own mind for 


398 DUTIES TO SELF. 

a guide as to his actions, is not slow in coming to 
the conclusion that it is far more harmful and dis¬ 
honorable to him to fly into a passion of anger over 
some petty insult, than to simply pass the matter 
by and pay no attention to it. It is only he who 
gauges his actions by what people will say, that 
thinks blood the only atonement for a disrespectful 
word. “True honor will be found,” writes one, “in 
that course which secures his highest spiritual worthi¬ 
ness. But when a man turns off the eye from his 
rational spirit, and looks out upon popular opinion 
and public estimation, and deems that to be honor 
which gives him reputation among the multitude, he 
has come to an estimate of personal dignity most 
false and really degrading. His honor is not worthi¬ 
ness, but popular repute; his standard is not inward 
excellence, but human opinion; and instead of ruling 
his own spirit, the conventional maxims and factitious 
customs of the society where he may happen to dwell 
will rule him.” 

HYPOCRISY. 

Still another very large class of serviles consists 
of those who try to appear something which they are 
not. The man of true independence is willing to seem 
to be exactly what he is. The one who is always 
devising some way to appear richer, or higher born, 
or better educated than he is, or the one who tries to 
make you think he is a member of a social circle to 
which he does not belong,— all such are slaves, and 



HYPOCRISY. 


399 


slaves held in the most unrelenting and degrading 
servitude. What man is more ridiculous than the one 
who is always telling you about the prominent people 
with whom he is intimately acquainted ? When you 
question him closely, you find that he has never seen 
most of them except in public places, perhaps some 
of them not even there. The hypocrisy of those who 
are not rich, but would seem to be so, must surely be 
a most painful burden to carry. What an amount of 
toil it involves! What a sacrifice of comforts for 
the sake of luxuries to put upon the outside for people 
to look at! What a dearth of thought, and reading, 
and music, and all things that go to make life noble 
and high ; and all for the sole purpose of having the 
appearance of that which, when real, gives little com¬ 
fort to most of its possessors. Was ever thing more 
unwise, or further from the true end of life ? What a 
sad perversion of that noble element in our natures 
(see page 305), the desire for the esteem of others. 

There is another kind of hypocrites,, not yet men¬ 
tioned, who are so not out of servility to the opin¬ 
ions of others so much as from desire for wealth, office, 
or social influence. They would care little for public 
opinion if it were not the road to something else they 
are trying to reach. These are the religious hypo¬ 
crites, men who put on the sheeps clothing of piety, 
while inwardly they are ravening wolves. They are 
worse than contemptible, they are villainous. By their 
long prayers in public places, by their solemn looks' 
and pious tones, and by their active participation in 


400 


DUTIES TO SELF. 


church and Sunday school affairs, they deceive people 
and win their confidence, and then they mercilessly 
fleece them, robbing the rich and poor alike of their 
capital, their hard-earned savings, or their honor. 

“Their friendship is a lurking snare, 

Their honor but an idle breath, 

Their smile the smile that traitors wear, 

Their love is hate, their life is death.” 








now come to the second class of 
duties which a man owes to him¬ 
self: those involved in the gen¬ 
eral idea of Self Culture. It is 
not a sufficient fulfillment of our 
IQT personal duties that we control ourselves 
from all that will induce harm ; we are morally 
bound to advance to as high a degree of 
perfection as is attainable, and improve our¬ 
selves in all things as we have opportunity. 
This perpetual and complete self-culture of 
every bodily and mental faculty is due in the 
right of our own spiritual being, and it is unworthy 
of any man to neglect any portion of his person 
which admits of improvement. We have started 

upon the hypothesis that a man’s duty is continually 
to improve himself, and to approach as nearly as 
possible to absolute perfection. Let us now enlarge 
somewhat upon that idea, and endeavor to find out 
just what it means, and just how much it contains. 
The thought is one of great scope; its range is, in 
fact, unbounded. It includes everything which goes 















































402 


SELF-CULTURE. 


to make up perfection of manhood, and perfection is 
infinite. All that is right or wrong in human nature, 
all that is beautiful or repulsive, strong or weak, noble 
or base, enters into the question of perfection. I men¬ 
tion these qualities separately, because ordinarily they 
are separate in meaning; but so far as concerns human 
character, any one of them includes all the others. 
The perfection includes all the elements of strength, 
beauty, and nobility. The man who is absolutely and 
perfectly strong is beautiful and noble in his strength. 
He can have no weaknesses, and as wrong is always 
weak, he must be always pure. It only remains, then, 
to determine what qualities must be present, and what 
absent, to constitute the perfection of right, strength, 
beauty, and nobility, in this our high ideal; and cer¬ 
tainly, this is no light task. As has been said before, 
we shall have need of all those tests of conscience, self- 
respect, happiness, etc., which have been regarded by 
various philosophers as final rules of right. 

The culture of self naturally divides into two 
branches, that of the body, or physical culture, and 
that of the mind. 


r Of the Body. 


Self-Culture. « 


v Of the Mind. 




< 


v 


Common Sense. 

Knowledge. 

Taste. 

The Sensibilities. 
The Will. 
Preseverance. 
Heroism. 






PHYSICAL CULTURE. 


403 


Physical Culture. 

• \ 

The culture of the body was spoken of (page 44), 
and of that little more need be said. Only let me 
once more urge the necessity of properly caring for 
and training this wonderful piece of mechanism. The 
methods belong to the science of hygiene, and come 
principally under the headings of exercise, diet, air, 
cleanliness, and dress. The perfect man must be 
perfect in every respect; the body has therefore a 
claim upon our attention on its own account. More 
than that, the body is the medium through which 
the mind acts, and unless it be strong and healthy, 
the mind cannot work to good advantage. The best 
of mechanics must have good tools in order to give 
effect to their skill. I do not mean that every man 
should get his body into such a condition as would 

1 

be necessary to the prize-fighter, or the acrobat, but 
he should bring it up to such a degree of strength as 
will enable it to perform readily any reasonable task 
which may be imposed upon it. 

Moreover, the body should be made as comely and 
beautiful as possible, and it should be neatly clothed,— 
handsomely, if so may be. It is but folly to affect 
ragged, ill-fitting, coarse, and filthy garments. If fine 
clothes cannot be afforded, wear plain ones, by all 
means. But let them be clean, neat, and whole; 
that does not involve any expenditure of money, 
and it makes far more difference in the appearance 


404 SELF-CULTURE. 

than the texture of the cloth can. This much the 
body deserves; only have a care not to neglect that 
which is higher and of more importance, for its sake. 


Cultivation of the JIind. 

Somebody has said that there is nothing great in 
the world but man, and that in man there is nothing 
great but mind. If that be true, it necessarily follows 
that there can be no other subject so worthy of engag¬ 
ing our attention as the cultivation of the mind. It 
is the one all-important thing, paramount to every¬ 
thing else ; for, in the words of Seneca, “ as the soil, 
however rich it may be, cannot be productive without 
culture, so the mind without cultivation can never 
produce much good fruit.” 

The mind is susceptible of greater and more con¬ 
stant improvement and expansion than the body. It is 
somewhat later in coming to full maturity, but it 
retains its vigor long after the body has withered 
and grown weak. There must probably be some limit 
to the power of the mind, but it is not easy to say 
where it is. It stretches off toward infinity, far pass¬ 
ing the range of sight. Each generation is crowned 
with mental achievements which lift it higher than 
the generations before it. With every age the num¬ 
ber of known facts and principles gets larger, and 
mind always proves itself equal to the demands made 
upon it, and uses these for the discovery of others. 


CULTIVATION OF THE MIND. 405 

Whether mind itself is growing stronger with the 
lapse of time may fairly be doubted, but its practical 
applications are becoming more numerous and com¬ 
prehensive every day. Moreover, whatever may be 
thought concerning the question of race-improvement, 
it cannot be doubted that individuals may increase 
their mental power to an indefinite extent. That 
keen Frenchman, La Rochefoucauld, was of the opin¬ 
ion that, owing to our natural indolence, “no one has 
ever yet taken the pains to enlarge and expand his 
mind to the full extent of its capacities.” If Socrates, 
and Bacon, and Shakespeare did not reach the full 
limit of their intellectual power, what may we not 
hope for? 

Nearly everything of importance that has ever been 
accomplished in the world, has been done by persons 
of much thought, persons who had cultivated their 
mental faculties to a very high degree. Most of them 
were men who had received what is called a liberal 
education. It is said that a very large proportion of 
the discoveries of science were the results of fortunate 
accidents and lucky guesses. That is true: but it is 
also true, that for some mysterious reason nearly all 
these happy accidents and guesses have occurred to 
men of the class described. Here again is confirma¬ 
tion of the idea that we should strive to attain the 
highest possible degree of culture, as thus we are 
not only discharging our highest duty to ourselves, 
but also putting ourselves into the best shape to dis¬ 
charge that which we owe to the world. 


406 


SELF-CULTURE. 


COMMON SENSE. 

“Fine sense and exalted sense,” says Addison, “are 
not half so useful as common sense; there are forty 
men of wit for one man of good sense; and he that 
will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every 
day at a loss for readier change.” This faculty, or 
whatever it may be considered, called common sense, 
is one of the qualities most essential to full intellectual 
power. It is the intellect of every-day life, the soul 
of business, society, and home affairs. It is the frame¬ 
work and walls of the intellectual house; wit and brill¬ 
iancy are the trimmings, the adornments, and should 
be considered as of only secondary importance. But 
as we often see beautifully ornamented houses whose 
walls are mere shells, so we frequently meet persons 
whose conversation sparkles with bright, witty sayings, 
but whose life seems either to go along just as it 
* happens, or to be led about hither and thither by 
the wildest vagaries that an uncontrolled fancy could 
conceive. 

Common sense is opposed to all such things as 
carelessness, stupidity, rashness, credulity, and skep¬ 
ticism. The person with an abundant endowment 
of good common sense will see whatever is going on 
around him, will rapidly accustom himself to his envi¬ 
ronments, and become at home among them. When 
he is brought into contact with any unfamiliar set of 
circumstances, he will carefully observe them, and will 
not fail to draw correct conclusions from them. The 


COMMON SENSE. 


407 


stupid dolt, who passes through the world with his 
mouth open and his eyes shut, seeing nothing, hear¬ 
ing nothing, comprehending nothing; the careless 
man, who pays no attention — no real, thoughtful 
attention, at least — to his surroundings, and to the 
signs and portents of the future, upon whom a dis¬ 
astrous business crash might come all unlooked for, 
though heralded for months by the plainest symptoms, 
and expected and guarded against by all his neighbors ; 
the rash man, who needlessly rushes into plainly indi¬ 
cated danger, not noticing it, or, if he does notice it, 
not caring for it, so deeply wrapped up is he in some 
pet scheme. All these are lamentably deficient in that 
homely, but inestimably valuable, quality of common 
sense. 

When common sense rises to its highest stage, it 
becomes a genius of itself. 

“Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven, 

And though no science, fairly worth the seven.” 

It is wonderful how much it sometimes accomplishes, 
even without the help of favoring external circum¬ 
stances. Some of the finest achievements of civil and 
military history, when sifted down, seem to have been 
the result of nothing else than a healthy, active com¬ 
mon sense. 

The man of good common sense is not the one 
who believes everything that is told him, simply 
because somebody said so. He is not the one who is 
being constantly duped by men who go about the 




408 


SELF-CULTURE. 


country selling all sorts of humbugs ; not the one who 

i 

can be wronged time and again, and always be put off 
by some ridiculous story of repentance or accident. 
Cotton says, somewhere in his varied essays, that 
we ought always to forgive an injury, but never to 
forget it. We owe it to the offender that we should 
forgive him, and we owe it to ourselves that we should 

remember his offense, to the end that he may have 

/ • 

no opportunity of repeating it. The man of sound 
sense obeys this maxim, particularly the last part — the 
first part belongs to the sphere of morals ; the same 
person is not likely to have the chance of injuring 
him twice, unless it be in some way that it was out 
of his power to control. 

On the other hand, he is not one who believes 
only things which he has seen and can fully under¬ 
stand. He recognizes the fact that his intellect does 
not reach out on all sides to the uttermost boundaries 
of intelligence. A certain degree of doubt and skepti¬ 
cism is, of course, necessary in every sound intellect, 
but the extreme of it is highly injurious and is incom¬ 
patible with healthy mental life. The confirmed 
skeptic and the over-credulous believer are equally 
lacking in this first requisite to intellectual strength, 
common sense. 

The man of common sense, again, is not the one 
who hastily embarks all that he has in some unconsid¬ 
ered speculation. He is not the one who lets go all 
hold upon the good thing that he has, in the blind 
hope that he may get something better. He dismisses 



COMMON SENSE. 


409 


the good thing only when he is sure of the better one. 
He is not the man who takes any careless risks. He 
does not plunge headlong into anything, but always 
acts with deliberation and caution, and keeps on the 
safe side of everything so far as he can. Such are the 
men who form the strength of any country; it is to 
them that it must look in time of trouble; it is they 
who have the solid substance from which alone it can 
draw the support it needs. They are often rich and 
seldom poor. Almost all of the men who have amassed 
great wealth by business, have been of this sensible, 
cautious temperament. If common sense, then, is so 
vital a part of every healthy mind, how necessary is its 
earnest cultivation to every one who would bring out 
all the power that is in him ! No one ougnt to neglect 
this most important part of his nature for the sake 
of cultivating in himself those more showy but less 
valuable faculties which secure the admiration of the 
world for a season, but when asked for bread can give 
nothing but a stone. 

KNOWLEDGE. 

“ That jewel, Knowledge, is great riches, riches 
which is not plundered by kinsmen, not carried off by 
thieves, not decreased by giving,” says the Hindu 
Bhavabhuti, who lived about eleven hundred years 
ago. And the old Indian philosopher spoke truly. 
There is no jewel so precious as knowledge; no pos¬ 
session so safe; it does not fluctuate in value; it is not 
subject to loss by fire, water, or thieves; it cannot be 


4 io 


SELF-CULTURE. 


taken away by the sheriff. The more you give of it,, 
the more you have; win it and it is yours forever. 

Without knowledge, the brightest intellect is as the 
uncut diamond; its beauty is not half brought out. 
With knowledge, the most stubborn and unpromising 
mind is like the granite column ; originally anything 
but fair, its polish has made it a thing of great beauty. 

When God asked Solomon what he should give 
him, Solomon chose, out of the whole universe of 
things,— knowledge and wisdom. And because he 
chose knowledge and wisdom, instead of riches, or 
honor, or lives of his enemies, or long life for himself, 
God gave him wisdom and knowledge, and also riches 
and honor more than any king before him ever had. 
And he does the same thing now; the man who pos¬ 
sesses wisdom and knowledge, has a valid claim upon 
riches and honor, and if he wants them, he can get 
them sooner than another. But the scholar does not 
often engage in the pursuit of wealth or position. He 
has something better. While they would be very 
desirable possessions, the time that it would cost to 
get them can be spent for something else whose power 
of producing happiness is greater. What pursuit can 
be so delightful as that of knowledge? Intellect uncul¬ 
tivated has but few pleasures, and those are low and 
gross. But the pleasures of cultivated intellect are 
found among the most refined and noble as well as 
the most ecstatic that enter into and form a part of 
human happiness. To the man of truly cultivated 
power of thought, there are a thousand voices that 


i 



KNOWLEDGE. 


411 

speak the rich language of instruction and wisdom, to 
which the uncultivated ear is totally deaf. He pos¬ 
sesses not only all the common enjoyments of life, 
home, friends, the bounties and beauties of munificent 
nature, in a degree greatly elevated by his cultivation, 
but he holds within his hands the keys that unlock 
the grandest treasures of the universe, and give him 
permission to walk the heights of glory where the 
angels tread. To him the sun pours down his glory- 
wreathed beams of warmth and life, laden with the 
rich instructions which science teaches of that glorious 
illuminator and governor of the solar system. Every 
ray is a dispatch from that gorgeous world of light, 
speaking of its opaque body, its vast magnitude, its 
luminous atmosphere, its revolutions on its own axis, 
its mighty attractive powers, its distance from us, the 
mysterious and almost godlike influence which it exerts 
upon our earth, the life and beauty it infuses into all 
things here, and all the rich and varied instruction 
gleaned by the penetrating mind of man from this 
source of light. The stars bring to him intelligence 
from the regions they inhabit, and each constellation 
affords him historic information of those who have 
gazed upon its stellar beauty in centuries gone by. 
The comets come to him on rapid wings of light, with 
their banners streaming back, telling by their incon¬ 
ceivable velocities, of the measureless depths they have 
penetrated in the immensity of the Creator’s realm. 
The moon pours down its floods of light, freighted 
with its burden of knowledge. The clouds come over 


412 


SELF-CULTURE. 


him but to tell him the story of their vapor-wreaths and 
the mission they have to perform. The lightnings 
flash but to give him instructive joy. The thunders 
rattle but to make him music. The winds roar but 
to whistle in his ears the story of their lives and labors. 
The earthquake moans but to send a voice of instruc¬ 
tion from below, and the volcano flashes up its flames, 
a great torchlight, to read the earth’s ancient history 
by. Old ocean pronounces in his ears its solemn ser¬ 
mon of grandeur, and the plains and mountains send 
back their instructive responses. The little flower 
beneath his feet opens its roseate volume to his admir¬ 
ing gaze; the blade of grass translates its mystical 
language for his pleasure, and the delicate leaf breathes 
about him its silent words of wisdom. He finds 
instruction in the cattle upon the thousand hills, in 
the birds above him, and the fishes below him. He 
finds books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and 
a voice in everything bidding him to a great feast of 
intellectual pleasure. 

A good library is a “holy of holies” to the scholar, 
and it may be entered at any time. One of the 
good things that Goethe puts into the mouth of the 
generally contemptible Wagner is this: 

“ How the mental raptures bear us 
From page to page, from book to book ! 

Then winter nights take loveliness untold, 

As warmer life in every limb had crowned you ; 

And when your hands unroll some parchment rare and old, 
All Heaven descends, and opens bright around you.” 


KNOWLEDGE. 413 

In the works of nearly every author may be found 
a tribute to books and study : 

“ Prefer knowledge to wealth : for one is transitory, 
the other perpetual.” 

‘'A taste for books,” writes another, “ is the pleasure 
and glory of my life. I would not exchange it for the 
glory of the Indies.” 

“If the crowns of all the kingdoms of the empire 
were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books 
and my love of reading, I would spurn them all.” 

“ I no sooner come into my library but I bolt the 
door to me, excluding lust, ambition, avarice, and all 
such vices, whose nurse is idleness, the mother of 
ignorance and melancholy. In the very lap of eternity, 
among so many divine souls, I take my seat with so 
lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity all that 
know not this happiness.” 

“ Give a man this taste (for good books), and the 
means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of 
making a happy man. You place him in contact with 
the best society in every period of history — with the 
wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the 
purest characters who have adorned humanity. You 
make him a denizen of all natures, a contemporary of 
all ages.” 

“ A book is good company. It is full of conversa¬ 
tion without loquacity. It comes to your longing with 
full instruction, but pursues you never. It is not 
offended at your absent-mindedness, nor jealous if 
you turn to other pleasures.” 



SELF-CULTURE. 


4 H. 

“ Who can overestimate the value of good books ? 
Those ships of thought, as Bacon so finely calls them, 
voyaging through the sea of time, and carrying their 
precious freight so safely from generation to genera¬ 
tion. Here are the finest minds giving us the best 
wisdom of present and all past ages; here are intellects 
gifted far beyond ours, ready to give us the results 
of lifetimes of patient thought, imaginations open to 
the beauty of the universe far beyond what it is given 
us to behold; characters whom we can only vainly 
hope to imitate, but whom it is one of the highest 
privileges of life to know. Here they all are; and to 
learn to know them is the privilege of the reading 
man.” 

“ I have friends whose society is extremely agree¬ 
able to me; they are of all ages and of every country. 
They have distinguished themselves both in the 
cabinet and in the field, and obtained high honors for 
their knowledge of the sciences. It is easy to gain 
access to them, for they are always at my service, and 
I admit them to my company, and dismiss them from 
it whenever I please. They are never troublesome, 
but immediately answer every question I ask them. 
Some relate to me the events of the past ages, while 
others reveal to me the secrets of nature. Some teach 
me how to live, and others how to die. Some, by 
their vivacity, drive away my cares and exhilarate my 
spirits, while others give fortitude to my mind, and 
teach me the important lesson how to restrain my 
desires, and to depend wholly on myself. They open 


V. 


KNOWLEDGE. 


415 


to me, in short, the various avenues of all the arts and 
sciences, and upon their information I safely rely in 
all emergencies.” 

“In the best books, great men talk to us, with us, 
and give us their most precious thoughts. Books 
are the voices of the distant and the dead; books 
are the true levelers. They give to all who will 
faithfully use them the society -and the presence of 
the greatest of our race. No matter how poor I 
am ; no matter though the prosperous of my own 
time will not enter my obscure dwelling, learned men 
and poets will enter and take up their abode under 
my roof.” 

One of the best, as it is one of the most celebrated, 
of these tributes, is from the pen of Robert Southey, 
who was once poet laureate of England, and whose 
stores of books were, as he says, “ more ample, per¬ 
haps, than were ever before possessed by one whose 
whole estate was in his inkstand.” He had about 
twenty-five thousand volumes. He says: 


“ My days among the dead are passed ; 
Around me I behold, 

Where’er these casual eyes are cast, 
The mighty minds of old ; 

My never-failing friends are they, 
With whom I converse day by day. 


“With them I take delight in weal, 
And seek relief in woe ; 

And while I understand and feel 
How much to them I owe, 

My cheeks have often been bedew’d 
With tears of thoughtful gratitude.” 


41 6 SELF-CULTURE. 

“A taste for reading will always carry you into the 
best possible company, and enable you to converse 
with men who will instruct you by their wisdom, 
and charm you with their wit; who will soothe 
you when fretted, refresh you when weary, counsel 
you when perplexed, and sympathize with you at 
all times,” says George S. Hillard. This being 
the case, then, and no thinking reader will question 
it, is it not a manifestation of wisdom to cultivate 
a taste for good reading? that which will make us 
better, happier, stronger? But, alas, how sadly it is 
neglected! How many young ladies and gentlemen 
grow up into womanhood and manhood without ever 
opening a volume and tasting the purifying nectar 
enclosed within its lids. How many seek for strength 
in mathematical solutions, for mental drill in conju¬ 
gating the dead words of languages buried when their 
time came to die, yet are wholly ignorant of the 
beauties that are treasured in their libraries. Here 
is food for mental drill. Here is food for mental 
strength. The wise Socrates said, “ Employ your time 
by improving yourself by other men’s documents; 
so shall you come easily by what others have labored 

so hard for. Prefer knowledge to wealth; for the 

% 

one is transitory, the other is perpetual.” A few 
dollars judiciously expended will place within your 
reach the wisdom of a lifetime. Our mental growth 
is measured by what we read, understand, and apply; 

m 

our physical by what we eat, digest, and assimilate. 
Full minds make full lives — lives of usefulness; empty 


KNOWLEDGE. 


417 


minds make empty lives—lives of idleness. Every 
act is a result of mental stimulus, an outgrowth of 
thought. As the thoughts are, so are the actions. 
Pure minds lead pure lives in channels of purity. 
Impure minds lead impure lives in channels of im- 
purity. The mind must act. The wheels of thought 
must turn. To stop them is to stop the beating 
of the heart. It must have food . 1 “What kind must 
we give it? Spoiled bacon, dry bread, spoiled butter? 
These weaken and sicken. Give it the best. It costs 
no more.” 

That old person is fortunate who, in youth, when 
his powers were yet vigorous, stocked his mind with 
the grand thoughts and deeds of all ages. He has 
something to fall back upon after all else fails. His 
eyes are dim, and his limbs tremble; active life is 
no longer possible for him; but he has a treasure- 
house within, upon which he can draw for the cur¬ 
rency of happiness. His imagination carries him to 
Venice, and he is in the court where Portia pleads in 
heavenly tones — 

“The quality of mercy is not strained, 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath.” 

Or he dwells among the Athenians, and watches with 
eager interest the contests of cestus and chariot, and 
the loftier contests wherein ^Eschylus and Sophocles, 
those kings of tragedy, strove for the mastery. Or 
he wanders out with Faust, and breathes the delicious 


27 


418 


SELF-CULTURE. 


air of Easter morning. Or he laughs again, and for 
the hundredth time, at the misanthropy of Alceste, the 
stinginess of H'arpagon, and the ridiculous aspirations 
of M. Jourdain. 

The man of much knowledge is shielded against 
temptation to crime. It is not often that the genuine 
scholar, the one who loves learning for its own sake, 
is hung or locked up in prison. His mind, by dwell¬ 
ing among pure and lofty thoughts continually, is itself 
filled with nobility, and lifted above crime and its 
temptations. 

“ Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly 
and essentially raises one man above another,” says 
Addison. Most other distinctions are external and 
largely accidental. Wealth often comes by accident; 
exalted station by right of birth is always an accidental 
possession, and is as likely to fall to the lot of an idiot 
as to that of anyone else. Such possessions add noth¬ 
ing to the real, native dignity and inward worthiness 
of a man ; neither do they afford any evidence that 
his mental powers are even respectable. Knowledge 
and culture, on the other hand, are never accidents. 
They are always the result of high aspirations and 
hard work on the part of the possessor of them. They 
are proof of a mind unusually strong and pure. More¬ 
over they add to the power of the mind, and make 
it continually more worthy of respect. 

The cultivated intellect is a source of never-fail¬ 
ing pleasure to its friends and companions. It is a 
mine of wealth sparkling with instruction. It has 


KNOWLEDGE. 419 

an attractive force, which draws around itself the 
minds of others, and delights them with its companion¬ 
ship. Its words are rich with the magic power of 
thought. It charms the ear with its varied harmony 
of rich and glowing language. It ravishes the heart 
with its recitals of the poetry of passion and love. It 
fires the imagination with the flights of its fancy, 
and the gorgeous drapery of its figures. It capti¬ 
vates the judgment by the justness of its opinions, 
the cogency of its reason, and the comprehensiveness 
of its views. Who that has ever enjoyed the com¬ 
panionship of a truly cultivated intellect, but knows 
its power to please and instruct the mind, to captivate 
and ravish the heart? How full of interest is the 
conversation of a truly intelligent man or woman! 
How eagerly do we seek the company of such, and 
how long do we enjoy it before we tire! Great are 
the charms which the cultivated intellect has for its 
companions. Then shall we not cultivate ours? 

Aeain, the cultivation of intellect increases our 
abilities to do good. Is a nation oppressed with 
tyranny? Are unjust laws grinding the face of the 
poor? Are existing institutions opposed to the well¬ 
being of the masses of the people ? Are old errors 
blinding the public mind and veiling the soul of 
humanity from the light of truth? Is ignorance 
palsying human energies and dwarfing human powers ? 
Is the whirlpool of intemperance swallowing up its 
thousands? Are war and slavery cursing their mill¬ 
ions? Cultivated intellect must apply the Archime- 


420 


SELF-CULTURE. ' 


dean lever of reform to these ruinous evils, or they 
can never be removed. Shall we not, then, cultivate 
our intellects? 

If all this is true, and no one can for a moment 
doubt its truth, it is evidently the duty of every human 
being to get all the knowledge possible. Willful 
ignorance is an outrage against self, and it might 
almost be called a crime against society. Says 
Carlyle: “It is not because of his toils that I lament 
for the poor; we must all toil, or steal (howsoever 
we do our stealing), which is worse; no faithful 
workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is 
hungry and athirst; but for him also there is food 
and drink: he is heavy-laden and weary; but for him 
also the heavens send sleep, and of the deepest; in 
his smoky crib, a clear, dewy haven of rest envelopes 
him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted dreams. 
But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his 
soul should go out; that no ray of heavenly, or even 
of earthly knowledge, should visit him ; but only, in 
the haggard darkness, like two specters, Fear and 
Indignation bear him company. Alas, while the body 
stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, 
dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated ! Alas, was this 
too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth 
never to be unfolded! That there should one man 
die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I 
call a tragedy, were it to happen more than twenty 
times in a minute, as by some computations it does. 
The miserable fraction of science which our united 


KNOWLEDGE. 


421 


mankind, in a wide universe of nescience, has acquired, 
why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?” 
This section began with a quotation from an old 
Hindu philosopher; let it close with one from another: 
“ Learning is a companion on a journey to a strange 
country. Learning is strength inexhaustible. A man 
without learning is a beast of the field.” 

11 

TASTE, 

No one can be a complete man or woman without 
the power to appreciate beauty; and the more keenly 
one is impressed by the beautiful, and the more taste 

one has in arranging things so as to make them beau- 

* 

tiful, the more complete he is in this particular direc¬ 
tion. It is quite a common notion that in a man the 
love of flowers, or poetry, or music, or pictures is 
evidence of some degree of effeminacy. It is nothing 
of the kind; it is only evidence of fine-grained man¬ 
hood. That a man prefers to have his house sur¬ 
rounded by a smooth, well-sodded lawn, rather than 
by a corn-field or a mud-puddle, is no sign that he is 
not a strong, rugged, practical man ; it only signifies 
that he is elevated somewhat above the pig in his 
ideas of living. I have known men who called flowers 
weeds , and would not allow their wives and children 
to raise house-plants or have flowers about the yard. 
Such men, instead of glorying over their masculinity, 
oueht to be ashamed of their coarseness. God filled 

o 

the universe with beauty, and surely he did not intend 
that man, the highest creature in the universe, should 


422 


SELF-CULTURE. 


be incapable of perceiving and enjoying that beauty 
which he had made for him. The gorgeous sunset, 
the silver brooklet, the delicately perfumed and richly 
tinted flower, and the singing bird, were not made for 
naught. Had beauty not been made for a purpose, 
the grass and the trees might just as well have been a 
dull, lifeless, rusty color, instead of having the rich, 
velvety, and many-shaded green with which we are 
familiar, and which is so charming. The sky and the 
ocean might have been of a dirty, muddy hue, as well as 
of the two magnificent shades of blue they now show. 
Colorless, shapeless and odorless flowers would answer 
all the purposes of reproduction as well as those splen¬ 
did masses of color and perfume that now delight us. 
The bray of the donkey, the howl of the cayote, or the 
screech of the magpie, would do quite as well as a 
means of communication as the song of the canary. 
Our own voices might have been made as harsh and 
unmusical as the grating of a saw, our own faces as 
unattractive as that of the baboon. There was no 
necessity in the economy of nature, other than the 
desire to please, that there should be any odors more 
agreeable than those of the onion or the pig-sty. But 
beauty was created, and evidently that we might derive 
pleasure from it; and he is not a full man, nor is she a 
complete woman, who does not enjoy it. Every one, 
not less the man than the woman, not less the boy than 
the girl, should cultivate to the utmost of his power 
this faculty of recognizing and loving the beautiful in 
all its forms, this taste , which has been defined as a gen- 


TASTE. 


423 


eral susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to 
discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, 
order, goodness, wheresoever or in whatsoever forms 
and accompaniments they are to be seen. 

THE SENSIBILITIES. 

From that part of our nature known as the Sensi¬ 
bilities come all the motives that impel men to action. 

All the emotions of sympathy, joy or grief; all 
the affections of love or hate ; all the myriad forms 
of incessant desire, spring from this source. These, 
like all other branches of our nature are subject to 
improvement, and the influences of training and habit. 
Duty demands that we throw ourselves into such 
company and such circumstances as will draw out the 
nobler emotions, and develop the purer and higher 
forms of affection and desire. 

Probably the widest and most powerful feeling in 
the entire Sensibility is that of sympathy. There 
is nothing more lovable and charming than the 
disposition which shows itself in a quick and full 
sympathy with whatever is good and noble in others, 
and a hearty, generous joy in recognizing it. Appre¬ 
ciation is the bond of peace among neighbors; the 
manifestation of love in families; and the shining 
mark of “the communion of the saints.” Washington 
Allston speaks of it, in a very beautiful way, as 
proof of devotion to our own chosen work. “ If a 
mechanic,” he says, “love his trade for its own sake, 
he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, 


424 SELF-CULTURE. 

as well in the work of another as in his own. This 
is the test of a true artisan.” And this is true of 
every calling. Appreciation shows that a man is doing 
his own work in the right spirit, and is in the free 
current of humanity — not a useless wreck on the 
shore. • 

It was necessary in the study of the Sensibilities 
(beginning page 251), to speak of the relative impor¬ 
tance of the various elements, and at the close of that 
subject, under the head of “Observations” (page 312), 
our duty in regard to them becomes very apparent. 

THE WILL. 

In the chapter on the Will (pages 361-376), we saw 
something of the importance of this part of our minds. 
We saw that it alone can give effect to the workings 
of the Intellect and Sensibility, that it is the executive, 
the acting, faculty of the mind, without whose co-opera¬ 
tion no voluntary act of any kind can be performed. 
We saw how pitiful would be the condition of a person 
entirely destitute of Will power, and how helpless are 
those whose animal passions have been allowed to 
grow so strong that the Will can no longer control 
them. We saw, too, that almost every great deed ever 
accomplished was performed by the expenditure of a 
great deal of Will force, and that nearly all the men 
whose names have passed beyond the bounds of their 
own country, or their own generation, have been men 
rich in this most valuable quality of mind. But there 
are yet some subjects connected with this theme 


THE WILL. 


425 


which need fuller consideration, namely, perseverance 
and heroism. 


PERSEVERANCE. 

“ Great works are performed not by strength, but 
by perseverance,” says Johnson, and often it is even 
so ; Lucretius says : 

“A falling drop at last will cave a stone.” 

Who has not seen deep ravines that were pro¬ 
duced by thd long-continued wear of very small 
streams? Upon the shore of Lake Superior are 
great rocks which have been worn into all sorts of 
fantastic shapes by the beating of the waves upon 
them. Other things are not more hard than rock, 
and they can be molded by the same process of 
patiently applying a small force to them. “ Let us 
only suffer any person to tell us his story morning 
and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will 
become our master,” said Burke. Those who are 
conversant with the history of legislation know that 
precisely this has been the course of every great 
reform. It was so with the anti-slavery movement 
in both England and the United States; it was so 
with the great Parliamentary reform movement which 
relieved England of her “rotten boroughs”; it is so 
with the wonderful temperance agitation which now 
rages so violently all over the United States. First 
a few individuals get in earnest about the matter, 
and they begin telling their story morning, noon and 


426 


SELF-CULTURE. 


night, to every one who will listen, and before many 
twelve-months roll by, behold a great party, boiling 
over with enthusiasm, and marching irresistibly on 
to the desired end. This is the almost uniform 
history of great popular movements. 

It will be seen from these facts, and such as these,, 
that perseverance is one of the trustiest arrows that 
a man can have in his quiver. The statement which 
the school boy finds so often repeated in his copy 
books that “ Rome was not built in a day,” is so true, 
metaphorically as well as literally, that it cannot be too 
strongly impressed upon either the child or the adult 
mind. Do you desire wealth ? Be patient Remember 
the inscription upon Sir Federigo’s chair— 

“All things come round to him who will but wait.” 

Great fortunes are not commonly won in a day, but 
by the slow process of earning and keeping cent after 
cent, and dollar after dollar, and so on, in a gradually 
increasing ratio. 

“From the birth of Christ to December 25, 1815, 
one penny, at five per cent simple interest, amounts 
to 7s. 3 i-2d.; at compound interest it would be 
.£1,227,742,357,141,817,589,060,967,240,755,491, 9s. pd., 
which, counted in dollars, would, at the present time, 
amount to something like $184,000,000,000,000,000,- 
000,000,000,000,000,000. Allowing a cubic inch of 
gold to be worth £38, 16s. 6d., and the above sum 
to be condensed into a globe of gold, its diameter 
will be six million one hundred and ninety-three 


PERSEVERANCE. 


427 


\ 


thousand six hundred and four miles, five hundred 
and forty yards, one foot, six inches, and a fraction, 
which would exceed in magnitude all the planets in 
the solar system; and supposing this earth to be 
solid gold, it would not pay one hour’s interest of 
the above sum.” Such is the result of so small a 
thing as a penny, working constantly for not quite 
two thousand years. 

Is position, power, your ambition ? Sill be patient. 

“We have not wings, we cannot soar; 

But we have feet to scale and clime 
By slow degrees, by more and more, 

The cloudy summits of our time. 

****** 

The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 

But they, while their companions slept, 

Were toiling upward in the night.” 

Is it learning you would have? Would you enjoy 
the secrets of knowledge? Here, least of all, could 
you by any possibility succeed without the aid of 
unyielding perseverance. A lucky speculation, or 
such an accident as the discovery of oil or gold upon 
an almost worthless farm, may make a man rich in 
a day; a fortunate — or unfortunate, which? — chain 
of circumstances may lift an unworthy man into a 
position of the most exalted dignity and power; but 
there is no such “short cut” to learning; nothing but 
years of patient, persevering, unremitting toil, can ever 


( 



428 


SELF-CULTURE. 


make a man a scholar. And if you wish scholarship, 
you must make up your mind to travel that road of 
labor, rough as it is. There is rich recompense how¬ 
ever, for all the hardship involved; it is like climbing 
the Alps: the road is steep and rugged, but on 
every hand are magnificent views, scenes of almost 
heavenly beauty, which he who stays in the valley 
below will never see. 

Then, whatever your aim, persevere. Bear in mind 
the motto of that brave old frontiersman, Colonel Davy 
Crocket, “ Be sure you are right, then go ahead.” 
Attempt nothing which is not right and just; but 
when that point is decided, and the work has begun, 
let nothing stop you. You may be surrounded by 
many discouragements, it may seem almost impossible 
that you should succeed, the world may seem to be 
specially bent on making you fail; but however great 
the obstacles in your pathway may seem, do not yield 
to them ; if you cannot preserve a hopeful courage, at 
least do not let go your hold upon that grim “ des¬ 
perate courage” about which Carlyle has so much to 
say in the letters written during the first thirty-five 
or forty years of his life, and to which we unques¬ 
tionably owe the splendid work that he did then and 
afterward. 

Especially is perseverance necessary in all steps 
for the improvement of the mind, or the formation 
of wise, fair, and just opinions. A sudden glance of 
truth without meditation upon it, brings nothing to 
perfection. The frequent change of occupations bring 


PERSEVERANCE. 


429 


success in none. There is an old saying, “ The hen 
that soon leaves her nest, never hatches her chicks,” 
but we never see animals thus foolish. The hen never 
loses confidence in her undertaking till she has kept 
her eggs faithfully warm for three weeks, at least. It 
is seldom, indeed, that persistent efforts in a proper 
field, and properly directed, end in anything else than 
success. 


HEROISM. 

Scarcely does there exist a quality of mind or heart 
which can do more to compel the admiration of the 
world than genuine heroism. In all its varieties, from 
the lowest animal fearlessness to the grandest moral 
heroism, its exhibition always excites in us some 
degree of admiration for the possessor, and even 
reverence, where the act is one of high quality: as 
was the case, for instance, where a boat caught fire 
on Lake Erie a short distance from shore, some 
years ago. The boat was crowded with passengers, 
every one of whom must perish unless the shore could 
be reached in time. The fate of these people depended 
solely upon the pilot. If he would stand by his post 
to the last, they might be saved; if not, they must die. 
The noble man did stand to his duty, and he held his 
wheel firmly, until one foot after the other, and one 
arm after the other, became helpless from the flames. 
Just as the boat touched shore he dropped dead, 
burned to death. Everyone else on board escaped; 
he was the only victim of the terrible disaster. But 


430 


SELF-CULTURE. 


how a recital of that man’s deed will stir an audience! 
Every man and -woman in a vast hall would almost 
fall down and worship him. The name of John May¬ 
nard will go down in poetry and song to the remotest 
generations, a burning protest against the idea that 
there is nothing great, nothing noble, in man. 

During the plague at Marseilles, when people 
were in such dread of the disease that the closest 
ties were severed, the physicians of the city held 
a consultation. Not understanding the nature of the 
pest, they could make no efficient resistance to its 
progress. It was decided that the only chance of 
saving the city from depopulation was that one of 
their number should dissect the body of some person 
who had died of the plague, and write down care¬ 
fully the results of his observations and leave the 
papers for his brother physicians. To do this was 
certain death, and the question was, Who is noble 
enough to sacrifice his own life that others may live ? 
For a little time no one spoke; but presently a sur¬ 
geon named Guyon, rich, happy in his family rela¬ 
tions, in the prime of life, and of great celebrity in 
his profession, bound to earth by every possible tie, 
stepped forth amid the admiring but incredulous looks 
of his comrades, and offered himself as the sacrifice. 
He then left the assembly, made his will and prepared 
everything, and early next morning he shut himself 
up with a corpse, which he proceeded to dissect, 
noting upon paper all that he saw and learned. When 
he had finished, he put the papers into a vase of 


PERSEVERANCE. 


431 


vinegar, went to the lazaretto, and died in twelve 
hours. “ Greater love hath no man than this, that 
a man lay down his life for his friends.” Here was 
a true hero, not despising death and not wishing to 
die, yet voluntarily facing it in its most horrible form 
that he might thereby save the lives of his fellow-men. 

Somebody, speaking of martial heroism, has very 
truly remarked that the really brave man is not the 
one who is unconscious of danger. Such a man is a 
mere brute, fool; to be surrounded by great dangers, 
and not to know it, or rather not to feel what it means, 
is surely no quality of a high mind, and ought not to 
win much credit and admiration for any man who 
possesses such a nature. Stupidity is not bravery. 
He is the truly brave man who perceives his danger, 
and fully feels the awful weight of responsibility 
resting upon him, but who, though his cheek may be 
blanched at the peril he is encountering, goes straight , 
ahead in the performance of his duty. 

But it is not only in matters of life and death that 
there is opportunity for the exercise of heroism. In 
fact, it is often much easier to subject ourselves to 
great danger, or to place ourselves in positions where 
we must undergo great hardship, than to do some 
other things which upon the face do not seem nearly 
so difficult. When a soldier leaves home for the seat 
of war, which do you think is the harder for him to 
do — to face unflinchingly the dangers and privations 
which Mars demands of his followers, or to leave his 
weeping family, to tear himself away from all his 



43 ^ 


SELF-CULTURE. 


pleasant associations, to burst the bonds that bind 
friends and kindred together ? 

When Columbus started on his ever memorable 
voyage, it is probable that he sailed away bravely, 
hopefully; he was bent upon a great achievement, he 
was surrounded by an applauding host, he was borne 
up by the excitement incident to the commencement 
of so long and so adventurous a voyage. But can we 
imagine how he looked the night before, when he 
was bidding farewell to his family and friends? I think 
his face could scarcely have been marked with that 
gayety and hopefulness which characterized it the next 
day. His cheeks were probably wet, his eyes dim, and 
his voice husky; then was when he passed through 
the severest struggle of his departure; then was when 
he wished, if ever, that he had not embarked in his 
romantic enterprise. There are occasions which call 

for active heroism almost daily in our ordinary life. 

* 

It is heroism for him who is strongly tempted to 
do some wrong deed to stand firmly and say “No!” 
It is heroism for a man to pursue steadily the course 
which his judgment tells him is right, when the world 
is clamoring about his heels, trying to coax, buy or 
scare him into some other mode of action. It is hero¬ 
ism for one to make personal sacrifices for the sake 
of that which he thinks right, or for the well-being 
of others. 

Since heroism, moral bravery, adds so much to the 
dignity and lovableness of every person who possesses 
it, is it not perfectly plain that our duty is to cultivate 



FAREWELL OF 


© LU M i U 

























































































» 



























PERSEVERANCE. 


433 


this, admirable quality? When taken in its proper 
and highest sense, heroism is greater and rarer hold* 
ing than knowledge, or intellectual acumen, or any 
other natural or acquired quality of mind. Perhaps 
some one may doubt whether heroism can be culti¬ 
vated. I think that if we reflect upon the subject 
for a little while, we shall agree with the great Scotch¬ 
man whom I have so often had occasion to quote, 
that sincerity is the base of all heroism, and sincerity 
surely is capable of cultivation. Here is what he has 
to say about the matter : “ Hero-worship never dies, nor 
can it die. Loyalty and sovereignty are everlasting in 
the world : and there is this in them, that they are 
grounded not on garnitures and semblances, but on 
realities and sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes — 
your “private judgment;” no, but by opening them, 
and by having something to see! * * * If hero 

mean sincere man , why may not every one of us be 
a hero ? A world all sincere, a believing world : the 
like has been, the like will again be — cannot help 
being. That were the right sort of worshipers for 
heroes: never could the truly better be so reverenced 
as where all were true and good! ” 

IN THE STRIFE FOR PERFECTION. 

Without a will as strong as steel, no energetic 
and successful struggle after perfection can be made. 
Thousands of difficulties and obstacles are constantly 

presenting themselves. There is hard work to be 
28 


434 


SELF-CULTURE. 


done; many an hour must be spent in labor which 
those who have no lofty aspirations may pass in sleep 
or play; the “midnight oil ” must often be burned; 
many sacrifices of material interest must be made for 
the sake of the right and honorable ; the passions and 
selfish propensities must be kept under strict control; 
there must be a sedulous cultivation of generosity, and 
other sympathetic traits. 

Longfellow’s beautiful little poem, “ Excelsior,” 
gives a fine picture of the life of one who is aiming at 
some high end. It ought to be memorized by every 
person whose sentiments are in sympathy with the 
meaning of that motto, “ Excelsior.” Though the 
poem was written years ago, it will never grow old, 
and we will venture to insert it: 

The shades of night were falling fast, 

As through an Alpine village passed 
A youth, who bore ’mid snow and ice, 

A banner with the strange device: 

“ Excelsior! ” 

His brow was sad; his eye beneath 
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath, 

And like a silver clarion rung 
The accents of that unknown tongue, 

“ Excelsior.” 

In happy homes he saw the light 
Of household fires gleam warm and bright; 

Above, the spectral glaciers shone, 

And from his lips escaped a groan, 

“ Excelsior.” 






PERSEVERANCE. 


435 


“Try not the pass!” the old man said; 

“ Dark lowers the tempest overhead, 

The roaring torrent is deep and wide!” 
But loud that clarion voice replied, 

“ Excelsior ! ” 

“O stay,” the maiden said, “and rest 
Thy weary head upon this breast! ” 

A tear stood in his bright blue eye, 

But still he answered with a sigh, 

“ Excelsior.” 

“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch! 
Beware the awful avalanche!” 

This was the peasant’s last good-night, 
A voice replied, far up the height, 

“ Excelsior! ” 

At break of day, as heavenward, 

The pious monks of Saint Bernard 
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, 

m 

A voice cried through the startled air, 

“ Excelsior! ” 

A traveler, by the faithful hound, 
Half-buried in the snow was found, 

Still grasping in his hand of ice 
That banner with the strange device, 

“ Excelsior.” 

There in the twilight cold and gray, 
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, 

And from the sky, serene and far, 

A voice fell, like a falling star, 

“ Excelsior.” 


436 


SELF-CULTURE. 


So it is. He will be met by dangers and hardships; 
he will be counseled by the worldly-wise not to persist 
in so toilsome and fruitless a search as his seems to 
be, but to descend to a humbler and less fanciful 
plane, and enjoy all the pleasures of animal exist¬ 
ence— to “eat, drink, and be merry”; love will employ 
all her soft allurements to coax him into staying his 
course, and substituting pleasure for duty as his guid¬ 
ing principle; the greed, avarice and ambition of him¬ 
self and others will daily test the strength of his 
devotion to duty. But whose heart fails to thrill in 
sympathy with him who never turned aside from his 
upward course while life lasted ? And after death, 
may we not truly hear that same voice from the 
clouds above, “Excelsior”? 

We see, then, that a strong will is of the utmost 
importance to the attainment of any high aim, and 
especially to that of the one I have pointed out as 
the most exalted one possible. It would be super¬ 
fluous to urge any farther the duty of cultivating it 
to its fullest extent. 




Self-Knowledge-. 


ESIDES those particular duties to self which 
come under the general headings of self- 
care and self-culture, there are two which 
do not seem to be clearly reducible to either 
class ; these are self-knowledge and industry. 

Considerable has already been said about 
self-knowledge, that being the key-note of 
this book. “ He that knows himself,” says Colton, 
“ knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, 
could not write a very profound lecture on other 
men’s heads.” 

There is nothing that helps a man in his conduct 
through life more than a knowledge of his own char¬ 
acteristic weaknesses, which, guarded against, become 
his strength, as there is nothing that tends more to 
the success of a man’s talents than his knowing the 
limits of his faculties, which are thus concentrated 
on some practical object. One man can do but one 
thing well. Universal pretensions end in nothing. 
When a man perfectly understands himself, mentally, 
and physically, and morally, his road to happiness is 
smooth, and society has a strong guarantee for his 
good conduct and usefulness. Some, by attempting 

what they can never accomplish, lose the opportunity 

437 











43 § 


SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 


of doing what they might, and are oftener perplexed 
than benefited by their folly. 

“When the furious Orson saw his own image 
reflected from his brother’s shield, he started back and 
stayed his blow; and many of our own attacks on 
our brother’s faults might be arrested, if there were a 
mirror on his bosom to show us our own likeness 
there. You had better find out one of your own 
weaknesses than ten of your neighbors.” A thorough 
knowledge of ourselves and our weaknesses will act 
in a two-fold manner in enabling us to control our 
propensities; we shall be utterly unable to maintain 
command over ourselves unless we know our disposi¬ 
tions ; if we do know them, the chance will be much 
better. Again, knowing that we have many faults, 
many evil traits which it is extremely hard for us 
to manage, we shall be much more sympathetic and 
liberal in our dealings with others who are also imper¬ 
fect— much less apt to fly into a passion of anger 
at some fault of theirs. The great and wise Goethe 
said that the older he grew, the less harshness he felt 
toward criminals of all classes, because he found, as 
he became better and better acquainted with his own 
character, that there was no crime which he himself, 

under some circumstances, might not have committed. 

« 

Here then, in this added control over ourselves, is 
another reason for considering the acquirement of 
self-knowledge to be nothing less than a duty. 

Again, it was shown some pages back that it is our 
duty to seek knowledge in general. Self-knowledge 



SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 


439 


being one of the most valuable and dignified of all 
kinds of learning, it surely follows that to attain it is 
also a duty we owe to ourselves and the world. But it 

is not merely on account of its value in business and 

* 

social affairs, that we need self-knowledge ; there are 
some circumstance which bring it much nearer home 
to the great aim of life, and make its acquirement a 
positive duty. A man who did not understand the 
construction, workings or purpose of a twine-binder 
would be a poor hand to suggest improvements in its 
mechanism. No one is likely to improve a thing which 
he does not understand, and man himself is the most 
complex object upon which anybody ever tried his skill 
in improving things. All this being true, it is manifest 
that self-knowledge must precede self-cultivation. Is 
not, then, in point of time, our very first duty this of 
learning to know ourselves ? 

Thought and knowledge rule the world. Ignorance • 
is the mother of weakness, pain and ruin. Knowledge 
alone is strength inexhaustible. The highest intelli¬ 
gence is of self. The only true wealth or real advance¬ 
ment are of the mind and spirit; and the supreme aim 
of life is to advance toward the highest good. To do 
this, we should be like Plato — searchers after truth. 
The examination of human character brings us to 
the study of the lives of others, and there can be no 
greater aid than to keep before our minds the models 
of the noblest men and women, which, like beacons on 

4 

the ocean’s shore, will not only light, but inspire us on 
toward the harbor of perfection and a nearer approach 



440 


SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 


to divinity. It is not enough for man to have pointed 
out to him the distant heights on the farther shore, 
or to simply be told what he ought to do; he must 
have set forth before him in the clearest manner the 
principles and laws which underlie all actions and mold 
human character. Such knowledge will be a light in 
the hands of the wanderer, enabling him to see through 
causes and their effects; to discriminate the good from 
the bad; to right his own impulses, thoughts, and 
actions, and approximate his true career and destiny. 
Thus may he feel that — 

“ The tissues of the life to be 

He weaves with colors all his own , 1 
And in the fields of destiny 
He reaps as he has sown.” 








INDUSTRY. 


LIFE of earnest purpose -is 
an easy one; perhaps there is more real 
hard work in it than in any other plan of 
existence a person could well choose. And 
certainly no man is going to succeed in it 
without constant and persistent industry. 
The industrious man, the one who labors 
unceasingly, willingly, yes, lovingly, at his 
task, is the only one who ever succeeds 
in any great work. Lazy men who go 
complainingly to their work, are extremely 
apt to return at the end of it with still 
louder complaints. They cannot compre¬ 
hend the difference between their achievements and 
those of their more energetic comrades, and must 
attribute it all to “hard luck,” “unkind Providence,” 
etc., for the last fault that a man will admit, even 
to himself, is laziness. 

Before we go on with the general phases of 
industry, let us stop to consider for a brief while that 
particular application of industry which is by half the 
people practically thought to be all there is in the sub¬ 
ject, namely, industry in business. It is every mans 

duty to get, if he can, enough wealth to make himself 

441 


a 

by no means 

















442 


INDUSTRY. 


and his family comfortable, to provide proper means 
for their education and continual refinement, as well 
as for their amusement and pleasure, to render them 
safe from hardship in case he should die, and to meet 
the demands of reasonable charity. More than this 
is superfluous. But to amass only so much as will 
supply all these wants requires a great deal of care and 
labor; he must be an industrious man who can do it, 
and not make of himself a mere slave to business. 
There are other things in each man’s life which 
need doing quite as badly as money-making, and in 
order to get time for them, he must be active enough 
about his business so that he can get through with 
it in something considerably less than the sixteen 
waking hours which every day brings. In some 
towns, the retail dealers open their stores at about 
six in the morning and keep them open until anywhere 
from nine o’clock in the evening to midnight. They 
say they are compelled to do it for the accommodation 
of their trade. Such trade ought not to be accommo¬ 
dated ; it ought to be compelled to go without shoes, 
and dresses, and cabbages until it learns to buy them 
during reasonable business hours. The public work 
of the vast banking interest has managed to condense 
itself into the narrow space between nine o’clock A.M., 
and four (in some cities three) o’clock P.M. Some¬ 
thing like this ought to be done in all branches of 
business; it might easily enough be arranged if only 
the co-operation of all could be secured. This would 
give to the overworked business man, clerk, and 


INDUSTRY. 


443 


mechanic, the time they so much need to spend with 
their families in the cultivation of the refinements and 
pleasures of civilized home life. 

“ Do with thy might what thy hands find to do.” 
Whatever you engage in, be vigorous about it; get 
out of it all that there is in it for you of profit or 
delight. Do not always act as if you expected to 
live forever and spend all the time upon the par¬ 
ticular piece of work at which you are now engaged. 
A lazy man, or a lazy woman, is an abomination in 
the sight of the Lord, and in the sight of 
humans as well. It is said that Epaminondas, the 
great Theban general, found one of his captains 
asleep during the daytime and, so strong was his 
hatred of idleness, slew him. For this he was re¬ 
proved, when he answered that he left the man as 
he found him — a dead man being as good as an 
idle one. 

Comte de Buffon, the great French naturalist, had 
a saying that “genius is labor,” and his own career 
is an excellent illustration of the fact. His mind 
was somewhat slow, and in youth he was noted for 
stupidity more than for anything else. But he deter¬ 
mined to make his life a success. Not being able 
to rise at a sufficiently early hour, he instructed his 
servant to rouse him, and promised him a crown 
every time he succeeded in getting him up before 
six. At first it was a difficult task; Buffon would 
make all sorts of excuses to be allowed to remain 
a little longer in bed. Once the servant, in order 


444 


INDUSTRY. 


to drive him out, resorted to the rather peculiar but 
quite effective experiment of throwing a pan of cold 
water under the covers. Buffon worked nine hours 
a day at his desk, and re-wrote ‘'Epochs of Nature” 
eleven times before he was content to leave it. 
Richard Baxter was weak and feeble of body, and 
was persecuted on account of his religious views, 
being kept in prison at one time for eighteen 
months; but, notwithstanding these difficulties, his 
industry was so great that he was able to enrich the 
polemical and religious literature of the English lan¬ 
guage with no less than one hundred and sixty-eight 
volumes. Luca Della Robbia, a celebrated sculptor 
of Florence, and the discoverer of the art of enam¬ 
eling, worked all day and far into the night. It was 
his custom to place his feet in the basket of shav¬ 
ings, to keep them from freezing, while he worked 
on his drawings at night. Palissy, a famous French 
potter, and the inventor of enameling in that coun¬ 
try, worked sixteen years on his discovery. Mean¬ 
while he was in such destitute circumstances that he 
parted with a portion of his clothing to get material 
for his experiments, and broke up the furniture and 
shelving of his house to feed his furnace. As might 
be expected, this patient industry was at last rewarded 
by complete success. 

The greatest orators have been those who made 
most careful preparation. Cicero wrote out his 
speeches beforehand, taking care to introduce into 
them passages which would have the air of being 


INDUSTRY. 


445 


extemporaneous. Of the six orations against Verres, 
only one was actually delivered; yet the remaining 
five contain touches which would seem to be entirely 
the result of momentary impulse. Webster disliked 
to speak upon any given subject without careful * 
preparation. It was the same with Demosthenes. 
There is a good story which shows how Webster 
worked. “ On a certain occasion Mr. Webster startled 
the Senate by a beautiful and striking remark in rela¬ 
tion to the extent of the British Empire, as follows : 

‘ She has dotted the surface of the whole globe with 
her possessions and military posts, whose morning 
drum-beat, following the sun and keeping company 
with the hours, circles the earth daily with one con¬ 
tinuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of 
England.’ On going out of the Senate, one of the 
members complimented Mr. Webster on this, saying 
that he was all the more struck with it as it was 
evidently impromptu. ‘You are mistaken,’ said Mr. 
Webster; ‘the idea occurred to me while I was on 
the ramparts of Quebec some months ago. I wrote 
it down, and re-wrote it, and after several trials got 
it to suit me, and laid it up for use. The time came 
to-day, and so I put it in.’ ” One of the keenest 
of English wits, the dread of Parliament, had all 
his witticisms cut and dried, and sought opportunities 
to introduce them naturally. 

The amount of labor expended by Demosthenes 
in fitting himself for his work as a public orator was 
marvelous. When he made his first attempt at a 


446 


INDUSTRY. 


public oration, his feeble and stammering voice, his 
interrupted respiration, his ungraceful gestures, and 
his ill-arranged periods, brought upon him general 
ridicule. Returning home in the utmost distress, he 
was reanimated by the kind aid of the actor Satyrus, 
who, having requested Demosthenes to repeat some 
passage from a dramatic poet, pronounced the same 
extract after him with so much exactness of enuncia¬ 
tion, and in a manner so true to nature, that it 
appeared to the young orator to be quite a different 
passage. Convinced, thereupon, how much grace and 
persuasive power a proper enunciation and manner 
add to the best oration he resolved to correct the 
deficiencies of his youth, and accomplished this with 
a zeal and perseverance which have passed into a 
proverb. How deeply he commands our respect and 
admiration by his struggles to overcome his natural 
infirmities, and remove the impressions produced by 
his first appearance before his assembled countrymen! 
He was not indebted for the glory he acquired either 
to the bounty of nature, or to the favor of circum¬ 
stances, but to the inherent strength of his own uncon¬ 
querable will. To free himself from stammering, he 
spoke with pebbles in his mouth, a story resting on 
the authority of Demetrius Phalereus, his contem¬ 
porary. It also appears that he was unable to articu¬ 
late clearly the letter r; but vanquished the difficulty 
most perfectly — for Cicero says: “By exercise he 
acquired the ability to speak very distinctly.” He 
removed the distortion of features which accompanied 



INDUSTRY. 


447 


his utterance, by watching the movements of his coun¬ 
tenance in a mirror; and a naked sword was suspended 
over his left shoulder, while he was declaiming in 
private, to prevent its rising above the level of the 
right. That his enunciation might be loud and full 
of emphasis, he frequently ran up the steepest and 
most uneven walks, an exercise by which his voice 
acquired both force and energy; and on the sea¬ 
shore, when the waves were violently agitated, he 
declaimed aloud, to accustom himself to the noise 
and tumult of a public assembly. He constructed a 
subterranean study, where he would often stay for 
two or three months together, shaving one side of 
his head, that, in case he should wish to go abroad, 
the shame of appearing in that condition might keep 
him within. In this solitary retreat, by the light of 
his lamp, he copied and recopied, ten times at least, 
the orations scattered throughout the history of Thu¬ 
cydides, for the purpose of molding his own style 
after so pure a model. Whatever may be the truth 
of these several stories, Demosthenes got credit for 
the most indefatigable labor in the acquisition of 
his art. His enemies, at a subsequent period of his 
career, attempted to ridicule this extraordinary indus¬ 
try, by remarking that all his arguments “smelt of 
the lamp,” and they maliciously embraced the oppor¬ 
tunity of denying him the possession of natural talents, 
ignoring his greatest talent, namely, untiring industry. 

Men of that class, known in this country as 
“ drummers,” often have peculiar experiences. The 


44 8 


INDUSTRY. 


following anecdote, which is an excellent illustration 
of the value of perseverance, forms something of a 
contrast with the intense earnestness of Demosthenes. 
It is told of a Scotch commercial traveler, hailing 
from Leith, and representing a Scotch tweed house : 
On a very cold December day, Sandy interviewed 
a prospective customer, and pressed him very hard 
to look at his “wee bit cloth paittrens.” After ex- 

i 

hausting all his more subtle arguments, Sandy said: 
“ Mon ! you might jist luik at ma paittrens; it wadna 
tak ye a minit.” 

“What’s the good of wasting your time and mine? 
I want nothing.” 

“ Ot, that disna mait’er, mon! If ye jist see ane, I 
ken ye’ll buy a piece or twa.” 

“ It’s no use, I tell you ! I wish you would take 
a denial, and not keep on bothering.” 

“ Me maisther said to me, when he sent me oot, 
says he, ‘ Sandy, when ye get v a likely customer, my 
lad, aye stick til him.’ Noo, I think you’re a likely 
chap to buy, and I maun jist dea as I’m tel’t, ye ken.” 

“ Don’t you see my shop is full of customers, and 
you keep on bothering me like this?” 

“Well, ye canna serve customers richt unless ye 
hae the richt stuff, ye ken. Sae the sunner ye luik 
at ma paittrens, the better for us baith.” 

“Will you go out of my shop, once for all?” 

“No’ me. I’ve come a’ the way frae Leith to sell 
ye stuff, an’ I’m no gaun awa’ without trying what I 
can dea. Gang awa,’ mon, an’ serve yer costimers, I 


INDUSTRY. 


449 


can wait — I’m in na hurry. Ye’ll buy a piece—may 
be twa.” 

“ Be off with you, or I shall have to kick you out.” 

“ Hech, sir; ye wadna do that. ’Twad be action¬ 
able, ye ken ! ” 

“ I’ll do it for you, nevertheless, if you’re not off, 
soon.” 

“ Ma guidness ! ye wadna dea’t. Gang on the noo. 
I’ll bide yer time, mon.” 

“Are you going, or are you not?” 

“No’ jist at present, ma maunie. I maun show ye 
ma paittrens.” 

“ Go, follow your cap, then,” said the enraged shop¬ 
keeper, as he seized hold of Sandy’s Glengarry and 
pitched it into the street, which was slush and mud. 

Sandy uttered not a word. He simply left his 
bundle on the counter, and stroking down his hair, 
deliberately walked out into the street, picked up his 
cap, and coming back into the shop with an unruffled 
countenance, brushing his unfortunate head covering, 
said to the merchant: 

“ Weel, as you’ve pitched oot ma cap intil the street, 
maybe ye’ll be good eneuch to luck at ma samples 
noo.” 

The people waiting to be served, and the merchant 
himself, as well — all burst out into a hearty, good- 
natured laugh at this instance of unruffled placidity 
under insult. Sandy made pride subservient to inter¬ 
est, and never dreamed of allowing his muddy cap, or 

his wounded feelings to stand in the way of selling a 
29 



450 


INDUSTRY. 


“ bit or twa of tweed, ye ken.” The popular feeling 
was all in Sandy’s favor, and the merchant’s customers 
strongly insisted that there must be something worth 
looking at .in the bundle of the persevering Scotch 
traveler. So the merchant relented, and when the 
place was cleared, examined Sandy’s samples of tweeds, 
and found them really good and cheap. 

As a matter of course, virtue should always be 
rewarded, according to orthodox popular narration. 
Sandy booked an order. He now relates this anec¬ 
dote, and is proprietor of one of the finest estates 
in Scotland. He can afford to look back with equa¬ 
nimity on the days when he was struggling hard as 
a salesman. But he never forgets the Sandy of 
former days, since the same muddy cap hangs in a 
conspicuous place in his library. When any of his 
friends ask him why he takes so much care of that 
old thing, he replies that it is always to him an 
emblem of perseverance. For the experience in 
which that Glengarry played so conspicuous a part 
so impressed itself upon Sandy’s mind that he never 
rested until he had drove his nail home, and placed 
himself in his present high position. “ Go thou and 
do likewise.” 

When Benjamin D’Israeli made his first speech in 
Parliament he was met by a storm of ridicule on 
account of his florid style and extravagant gestures. 
He stopped short, with this remarkable prophecy: 
“ I shall sit down now, but the time will come when 
you will hear me.” For several years after, he made 


INDUSTRY. 


451 


but few speeches, and studied very carefully the best 
parliamentary orators. The result was that he became 
the acknowledged leader of the Conservative party of 
his nation, and so far overcame the prejudice against 
his race (he was a Jew), as to be made Prime Min¬ 
ister of England at two separate times, and to be 
created a peer with the title, Earl of Beaconsfield. 

The founder of Russian civilization was Peter the 
Great. When a boy, designing parties tried every 
possible way to corrupt his morals and destroy his 
energy of character. But his mind was strong enough 
to resist their wiles and convert the very instruments 
of corruption into means of education. So great 
* was his desire to civilize his country, that he applied 
himself personally to learn the arts of Western 
Europe that he might the better introduce them 
into Russia. For the sake of the drill, he enlisted 
as a private in a company of soldiers, he learned 
the arts of fortification, ship-building, etc., and thus 
paved the way for the great advance his country made 
during his reign. 

Jared Sparks, once president of Harvard Col¬ 
lege, was, at the age of twenty years, a carpenter’s 
apprentice. Constant, untiring industry was the lever 
that raised him to his exalted position. Michael 
Faraday, the greatest of chemists, was the son of 
a blacksmith, had a brother who was a gas-fitter, and 
was himself in his boyhood a book-binder’s appren¬ 
tice. Hard work is what made him. It is what makes 
every man; one may perhaps be a person without 


452 


INDUSTRY. 


work, but he can hardly rise to the dignity of a man. 
‘‘The idle man is an annoyance — a nuisance. He 
is of no benefit to anybody; he is an intruder in 
the busy thoroughfare of every-day life; he is of no 
advantage; he annoys busy men, he makes them 
unhappy. He may have an income to support his 
idleness, or he may ‘ sponge ’ on his good natured 
friends, but in either case he is despised. Young 
men, do something in this busy, bustling, wide-awake 
world! Move for the benefit of mankind, if not for 
yourself. Do not be idle. God’s law is that by the 
sweat of our brow we shall earn our bread.” 

Here, I think, is the finest thing I ever read on 
the subject of labor. It is one of Teufelsdrockh’s 
sayings: “Two men I honor, and no third.. First, 
the toil-worn craftsman, that, with earth-made imple¬ 
ment, laboriously conquers the earth, and makes her 
man’s. Venerable to me is the hard hand, crooked, 
coarse, but wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning 
virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the scepter of this 
planet. Venerable, too, is the rugged face, all 
weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; 
for it is the face of a man living manlike. Oh, but 
the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because 
we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated 
brother ! For us was thy back so bent, for us were 
thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou wert 
our conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our 
battles wert thou so marred. For in thee, too, lay 
a God-created form, but it was not to be unfolded; 



INDUSTRY. 453 

encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and 
defacements of labor: and thy body, like thy soul, 
was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on : thou 
art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest 
for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. 

“A second man I honor, and still more highly: him 
who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; 
not daily bread, but the bread of life. Is not he, 
too, in his duty; endeavoring toward inward har¬ 
mony ; revealing this, by act or by word, through all 
his outward endeavors, be they high or low? High¬ 
est of all, when his outward and inward endeavor are 
one : when we can name him Artist; not earthly crafts¬ 
man only, but inspired thinker, who with heaven- 
made implement conquers heaven for us! If the poor 
and humble toil that we have food, must not the 
high and glorious toil for him in return, that he 
have light, have guidance, freedom and immortality ? 
These too, in all their degrees, I honor: all else is 
chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it 
listeth. 

“Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find 
both dignities united; and he that must toil out¬ 
wardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling 
inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world I 
know nothing than a peasant saint, could such now 
anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee 
back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor 
of heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of 
earth, like a light shining in great darkness!” 


454 


INDUSTRY. 


When the Romans crossed the Alps, and began 
to overrun that part of Europe which now includes 
Germany, northern France, and some smaller coun¬ 
tries, and when they crossed the channel to what 
are now known as the British Islands, the things 
that most attracted their attention were the cold, 
barren, inhospitable nature of the climate and soil 
as compared with the smiling warmth and fertility 
of their own sunny Italy, and the coarse savageness, 
the utter absence of culture, comfort, and everything 
else that civilization brings with it, notable among 
the inhabitants. All this was less than two thou¬ 
sand years ago. What a contrast between the view 
that presented itself to Caesar and his armies and 
that which now draws hundreds of tourists from our 
far-away western land every year! The country that 
was a barren wilderness then supports at least one 
hundred and twenty millions of people now. Every¬ 
where one is surrounded, not by the signs of bar¬ 
barism, but by those of the very highest civilization 
now visible on earth. Everything is there almost 
that a man could wish to see in the way of material 
things. The physical man could scarcely ask for a 
comfort of any kind which could not be readily sup¬ 
plied in those great centers of trade—London, Paris, 
Berlin. The mental part of our nature is yet more 
richly supplied. It has the British Museum, and the 
National Library of France; Germany, too, can fur-> 
nish it with many fine old libraries, and with great 
galleries containing the works of a long list of 



INDUSTRY. 


455 


masters of that finest of the arts, painting. Persist¬ 
ent industry, united to intelligence, i-s the only avenue 
through which all this could have been brought about. 
And history shows that industry has been at work in 
those countries nearly all this time, patiently remov¬ 
ing difficulties, and converting a desert into a blooming 
garden. For lack of intelligent minds and industrious 
hands, Egypt, with her wonderful natural advantages, 
has sunk to an almost insignificant place in the man¬ 
agement of the world’s affairs. For the same cause 
many other countries of Africa, Asia, and South 
America are kept far in the background, though 
they possess great natural advantages of soil and 
climate, of which lands lying far north of the equator 
cannot boast. 

“ A used key is always bright,” says an old proverb. 
So is anything, used. Rust eats the vitality out of 
things much faster than use wears it away. A complex 
and delicate machine may be used constantly for years, 
if well taken care of, but a long bill of repairs will have 
to be paid if it is left standing idle and exposed to sun 
and storm for a few months. If a man uses his mind 
and body under the right conditions, they become 
constantly smoother and more vigorous in their actions, 
while if he lets them lie dormant, it gets harder and 
harder with every day that passes for them to act; 
the rust of inactivity seems to eat into them, taking 
away the vitality and strength. Literary men are per¬ 
haps the ones who put the heaviest and most constant 
burdens upon their minds, and yet Mr. D Israeli made 


# 


j , 


456 


INDUSTRY. 


out a list of twenty industrious literary workers of 
whom, if I remember rightly, not one was under ninety 
when he died, and whose aggregate age was almost 
two thousand years, to make which would require an 
average of one hundred. 

There is no man so pressed with business or 
household cares that he does not find some leisure 
hours; in fact, if each man will stop to count up all 
the time he wastes in the course of a week, he will 
be startled at the amount of it. If all this time 
which he commonly wastes were put to some good 
purpose, he might accomplish more than he has 
dreamed of. Many of the world’s master minds took 
their first lessons in thinking in just this way. Horace 
Greeley was one such man. Daniel Webster and 
Abraham Lincoln were two more; Garfield was 
another. A modern scholar of considerable note 
learned to write and solve problems in the leisure 
moments of his life as a shoemaker’s apprentice, 
using, instead of the paper and pencil, which he had 
not money enough to buy, waste bits of leather ham¬ 
mered smooth, upon which he scratched with an awl. 
Orange Judd is another triumph of clear grit over 
environment. Without a dollar of help not earned by 
himself, or the prospect of any, he started for the school 
where he was to prepare for college; earned corn by 
working for neighboring farmers; carried it himself 
to the mill to have it ground, and brought back the 
meal to his room ; cooked it himself as mush; milked 
a cow or two daily for his pint of milk per day; 


INDUSTRY. 457 

and so lived on mush and milk as his chief subsistence 
for months together. Afterward he worked his own 
way through Wesleyan University and a three years’ 
post-graduate course at Yale. He afterward became 
one of the wealthiest men of the nation, and in 1869 
gave to the same college he had worked his way 
through when young, the munificent sum of one hun¬ 
dred thousand dollars. 

Employ these odd minutes, then. Do something 
useful with them. An astonishing amount of work 
of whatever kind you please can be accomplished 
in these minutes, if only they are not allowed to 
escape. 

I should not like to be understood however as 
counting amusements to be of no value. Often to 
spend our time in good hearty amusement is the 
very best disposition that we can make of it. All 
rivers, whether they are small or large, agree in 
one character; they like to lean a little on one 
side; they cannot bear to have their channels deepest 
in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one 
bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get 
cool under; one shingly shore to play over, where 
they may be shallow and foolish, and child-like; and 
another steep shore, under which they can pause and 
purify themselves, and get their strength of waves 
together for due occasions. Rivers in this way are 
just like wise men, who keep one side of their life 
for play and another for work ; and can be brilliant 
and chattering and transparent when they are at ease, 


45§ 


INDUSTRY. 


and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they 
set themselves to the main purpose. 

“ Satan finds work for idle hands to do,” “An idle 
brain is the devil’s workshop,” are two old proverbs 
that contain a deal of truth. It is not generally from 
among the industrious, working classes that our crim¬ 
inals come, but from among the street loafers. A 
working man has neither time nor occasion for the 
commission of crime. A warden of the Massachu¬ 
setts state prison said: “ Eight out of every ten come 
here by liquor, and a great curse is not learning a 
trade. Young men get the notion that it is not 
genteel to learn a trade; they idle away their time, 
get into saloons, acquire the habit of drinking, and 
then gambling, and then they are ready for any 
crime.” 

A concomitant of human industry is thoroughness. 
Thorough and through are the same word ; Shakes¬ 
peare uses either of them, as suits his measure best. 
Thoroughness, then, is the quality of carrying every¬ 
thing through , finishing it. And it is indeed a valuable 

quality to possess ; it is the result of perseverance and 

• 

industry united. The man who is thorough about 
whatever he undertakes, does it well, finishes it, gets 
a great deal more personal satisfaction out of the result 
of his labors, and rises a great deal faster and farther 
in his trade or profession than the one who does his 
work in a slip-shod manner or leaves it half done. Be 
thorough, then ; remember the maxim that “ Whatever 
is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” 


INDUSTRY. 


459 


Time never passes so slowly and tediously as to 
the idle and listless. The best cure for dullness, is 
to keep busy. “ It is better to do the most insig¬ 
nificant thing in the world,” Goethe somewhere says, 
“ than to regard a single half-hour as insignificant.” 
Industry “sweeteneth our enjoyments, and seasoneth 
our attainments with a delightful relish,” says Barrow. 
A man who gives his children habits of industry, pro¬ 
vides for them better than by giving them a fortune. 


\ 








HERE is one more duty which may be most 
conveniently mentioned in this connection; 
it is that of avoiding all cruelty in our treat¬ 
ment of animals. Kindness is one of the 
essentials to a beautiful character. Harsh¬ 
ness, crabbedness, and cruelty are always 
and everywhere vulgar and ugly. They are 
signs of a coarse-grained, weak nature. 
Kindness to everybody and everything, 
especially to inferiors, is an element of 
the manliest manhood. Occasion will arise 
hereafter to speak of the duty of kindness 
to persons, but that of kindness to animals 
is a duty to ourselves, for we cannot afford 
to be unkind to anything. This matter has never been 
agitated much until within late years. It was not until 
1835 that bull-baiting was prohibited by law in Eng¬ 
land. Bull-fights still occur occasionally in Spain, 
though the custom is dying out. A match at pigeon¬ 
shooting is a thing we frequently hear of. The same 
sport is thus spoken of in England: “One need only 
go to Hurlingham on ladies’ day to see the cruelty 
with which pigeons are treated. The poor things 

are let out of their trap, and are shot down for a 

bet, dyeing the ladies’ dresses with, their blood. There 

460 

































KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


461 


is as much clapping of hands as at a Spanish bull-fight. 
The pricked bird, the bird with a broken leg, contrives 
to fly out of the field, and falls into some covert 
place, and there dies after a long agony. Is this 
the lesson of humanity that English women would 
teach to their sons and daughters? The fashion for 
birds’ wings in ladies’ dresses has been a woeful thing 
for birds. They have been shot down in all countries 
to supply ‘gentle woman’s’ passion for birds’ wings. 
The ‘Spectator’ mentions a marriage in which eleven 
bridesmaids wore dresses trimmed with swan’s down 
and robins. What a slaughter of birds for that one 
wedding! The robins should have been draped in 
blood. But ladies will permit the slaughter rather 
than be out of fashion. But bird slaughter has now 
reached proportions which threaten the extinction of 
some of the most beautiful of God’s creatures.” 

“I venture to hope,” said the Archbishop of York, 
“that the time is not far off when it will be a matter 
of curious history that English gentlemen once used to 
publish it abroad with satisfaction that they and their 
friends had in a couple of days killed two thousand 
head of game that had been driven together into 
a wood for certain death. Then, again, the trapped 
bird, released without a chance, wounded again and 
again, and picked up fluttering and suffering, is 
made a pastime for strong men, and when women 
make a holiday over such sport, it shows that they 
are without love or pity. It reflects a shadow, and 
becomes a painful study indeed.” 


462 


KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


The draught horses in common service are often 
poor, crippled, over-loaded, galled by the badly fitting 
harness; and when, under such circumstances, they 
cannot do the work their brutal masters think they 
should, they are unmercifully beaten. The horses 
that draw the fine carriages of the rich, sometimes 
receive treatment that might almost be called worse. 
Their heads are held in an unnatural position by 
tight reins, and their mouths are torn by harsh bits. 
Birds, and various animals whose nature it is to roam 
freely through the air and forests, are captured and 
held prisoners during the remainder of their lives. 
Innumerable are the modes of cruelty practiced upon 
the helpless brutes, both wild and tame. 

To man was given the dominion over all creatures ; 
but the right was only given him to use, and not to 
abuse them. We have a right to employ the horse, 
the cow, the dog, the sheep, any animal in our service ; 
but we have no right to starve them, beat them, over¬ 
work them, or shut them up in foul, unhealthy pens. 
These faithful and affectionate creatures surely deserve 
better treatment at our hands. We must not try to 
excuse ourselves with the thought that they know no 
other way, have no finer feelings, and could not 
appreciate better treatment if we gave it them. The 
hog is notorious as the most filthy of all domestic 
animals, and even he, if given a fair chance, will divide 
up his sty into apartments for the different purposes 
of eating, sleeping, and other requirements of hog life, 
and will vigorously adhere to the division he has made, 


KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


4^3 


and lead a comparatively clean existence. Most brutes 
are a great deal more susceptible to the influences of 
gentle usage than very many men imagine. A number 
of cases are on record of dogs which have remained at 
the graves of their masters until death by starvation 
ensued; as, for example, the well-known case of Bobby, 
the dog who watched over his master’s grave for four 
years, until he finally died in his task. A monument 
was erected outside the churchyard to perpetuate the 
memory of the faithful beast. And only recently an 
instance was reported from one of the southern states 
of a negro who had been confined in prison for some 
offense, and whose dog remained outside the build¬ 
ing and howled so piteously for his master, that the 
citizens of the town, out of sympathy for the poor 
creature, built a kennel for him and provided him with 
food,, and finally petitioned for the pardon of the 
criminal on account of the affection for him exhibited 
by the dog, thinking that one wholly bad could not 
be the object of so warm an attachment. 

“ Thoreau, of Concord, Massachusetts, was like the 
old hermits in his love for animals. He took to the 
woods, near Walden Pond, in 1845. He began to 
build a house, to the surprise of the raccoons and 
squirrels. But the animals soon began to know that 
he meant them no harm. He would lie down on a 
fallen tree, or on the edge of a rock, and remain 
quiet. The squirrel, or raccoon, or woodchuck would 
come closer and closer upon him, and even touch him. 
The news went through the woods that there was 


464 KINDNESS TO ANIMALS, 

a man amono* them who would not kill them. There 

o 

arose a beautiful sympathy between the man, and 
the birds, and the animals. They came at his call. 
Even the snakes would wind round his feet. On 
taking a squirrel from a tree, the little creature would 
refuse to leave him, and hide its head in Thoreau’s 
waistcoat. He had built his house over a wood- 
mouse’s nest; and at length the wood-mouse, at first 
terrified, came and picked up the crumbs at his feet. 
Then it would run over his shoes and over his clothes. 

At last the wood-mouse became so tame that it ran 

\ 

along his sleeves, while he was sitting at his bench, 
and round and round the paper which held his dinner. 
When he took up a bit of cheese, the wood-mouse 
came and nibbled it, sitting in his hand, and when 
it was finished, it cleaned its face and paws like a fly, 
and walked away. We have never heard of such a 
communion between man and animals, except in the 
case of hermits, so plentifully recorded by Kenelm 
Digby, in his ‘ Mores Catholic.’ ” 

In the chapter on memory an anecdote was quoted 
of an elephant which, having been kindly treated by 
a soldier in an Eastern army, shielded him for several 
hours against the officers who wished to punish him 
for drunkenness. (See page 122.) 

One of the most zealous of the English apostles 
of kindness to animals is Edward Fordham Flower, 

a man who has had a very remarkable history. He 

% 

was born in Hertford, England, in 1805. An incident 
of his boyhood which probably had much influence 


KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


465 


upon his subsequent career, is thus described: “At 
six, he got a pony. His uncle, Edward K. Ford- 
ham, purchased for him a beautiful present — a saddle, 
bridle, and whip. One day he was out with his 
father, and flogged the pony because he shied at 
something on the road. His father saw it, and called 
him back. ‘Now, Ned, why did you flog that pony?’ 
‘Because it shied.’ ‘Well, don’t you see that there 
was a deep hole into which you were leading him?’ 
His father took from his hand the whip and laid it 
across his shoulders. ‘Do you like that?’ ‘No,’ 
said the boy, ‘I detest it.’ ‘Well, then, Ned, never 
flog a pony unless it is absolutely necessary.’” When 
he was twelve years old, his father sold his property 
in England and removed to America, settling in 
Edwards county, in the southeast part of Illinois, a 
vast wilderness at that time, inhabited mostly by 
Indians. This was during slavery times, and the 
Flowers took an active part in helping the negroes 
who had escaped across the Ohio, and also against 
the bands of kidnappers who made a business of 
capturing free blacks and selling them in the southern 
markets. By this opposition they gained the hatred 
of the pro-slavery men, and Flower was obliged to 
flee the country in order to save his life. He returned 
to England at the age of twenty, and has lived in 
that country since then. In 1869 he had a stroke 
of paralysis and lost the use of the English language. 
He had to begin again with nouns, adjectives, adverbs, 

and thus on. 

30 



466 


KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


He went to Rome, and his health improved. Then 
he went to Pau in the south of France. In all places 
he saw the cruelty inflicted upon horses, mules and 
donkeys. He almost cried over them. When he came 
to live in London, in 1873, he set himself to work 
to cure the mischief that was being done to horses — 
especially by the use of bits and bearing-reins. He 
bought a black horse. It had previously been curbed, 
bitted and tortured. He cured the horse at once by 
takinof off the instruments of torture. He wrote a 
letter to the “ Times,” and, through the instrumentality 
of the late Sir Arthur Helps, it was inserted. It was 
at his instance Sir Arthur composed his work upon 
“Animals and their Masters.” He went to a meet¬ 
ing of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals, and found a dozen carriages at the door 
with the horses gagged up by bits and bearing-reins, 
standing there for hours together. He went to the 
committee, but they would not hear him. The chair¬ 
man ordered him out of the room. 

He went on his way, nevertheless. He was not 
to be gagged. He wrote letters to all the daily 
papers, which were inserted. He thus roused public 
opinion on the subject. He next published his pam¬ 
phlet on “ Bits and Bearing-reins,” and scattered it 
broadcast throughout the country. It was followed 
by “ Horses and Harness,” a sequel to the first pam¬ 
phlet; and that, too, was largely circulated. Mr. 
Flower gives the following description of the harness¬ 
ing of the horses of a fashionable “turn-out”: “A 



KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


46 7 


tight bearing-rein is used to pull the horses’ heads 
up, and a fixed martingale to pull them down, close 
blinkers to prevent them seeing their way, cruppers 
which are obliged to be tight to hold the bearing- 
reins in their places, so that the heads and tails of 
the animals are tied tight together. To obtain a 
little ease by shortening its back when standing still, 
the horse extends its fore feet beyond their natural 
position, while the hinder ones are proportionately 
thrown back, causing inflammation and navicular lame¬ 
ness. The tight bearing-rein, by holding the head 
in an unnatural and fixed position, strains the wind¬ 
pipe and respiratory organs, inducing ‘ heavy-breath¬ 
ing’ and other maladies. The front part of the bridle 
is frequently too short, thereby hurting the lower 
part of the ears; also the winker strap, which, when 
tight, besides drawing the winkers too close, pulls 
forward the top of the bridle so as to press upon 
and hurt the back of the ears; and when the horse 
shows signs of uneasiness by throwing up its head, 
he is punished by more and tighter straps, the coach¬ 
man seldom troubling himself to find out and remedy 
the cause of the irritation. 

“ Fashion is strong — stronger I fear, than our 
humanity — but still I have hopes. Fashion no longer 
orders horses to be cropped, docked, and nicked; 
therefore, these new forms of distortion and cruelty 
may give way. If a few leaders of fashion would join 
with men and women of common sense and lovers 
of humanity, we should soon wipe out this blot upon 




468 


KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


our civilization. I am happy to have been allowed 
to raise my feeble voice in the cause; and I heartily 
thank all of those (and they are many), who have 
come forward to help and encourage me. I shall 
persevere, and, though I am old, I do not despair 
of living long enough to deserve to have it engraved 
upon my tomb-stone : ‘He was one of those men who 
caused the bearing-rein to be abolished.’ ” 

o 

Aside from all moral considerations, self-interest 
ought to be a sufficient incentive to the proper care 
of animals. A well-fed, well-groomed horse will do 

much more work than the half-starved, ill-tended 

r t 

skeleton, so common on our streets. The cow that 
is kept clean, and allowed the run of a good pasture, 
and given plenty of turnips, pumpkins, and other 
things which cows esteem as delicacies, will give more 
and better milk than one which is stinted in her allow¬ 
ance of food. To beat an animal upon the slightest 
provocation is by no means the best way to train it 
to a habit of constant obedience. On the contrary, 
it is the surest possible method of making it timid, 
vicious, and worthless. Mr. Rarey, probably the most 
successful of all horse-trainers, never used the whip. * 

A man who, in spite of all the dictates of prudence 
and humanity, can so degrade himself as to beat or 
otherwise misuse the helpless creatures intrusted to 
his care, must be himself worse than a brute; he must 
have a lump of steel where his heart ought to be. It 
is to be hoped that Mr. Flower, Mr. Bergh and their 
co-laborers will succeed in educating the public senti- 


KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. 


469 


ment to such a point that it will be a disgrace, and 
universally acknowledged as such, for a man to in any 
way mistreat his animals ; and that it will be felt by 
every one that to deprive them of their liberty is 
enough, without adding any more of trouble to their 
not too pleasant lives. 



1 




















Duties to ©thers. 



AN is a social being by nature, 
and he could not if he wished, 
live profitably in entire selfish¬ 
ness. That enterprise, labor, or 
^ business, which is not in some way 


k a benefit to other people is in every 
case a degrading business. The human 
heart cannot long be satisfied without 
feeling that it is doing something for the 
benefit of others. The elements of sym- 
^ pathy (see page 259), the love of others 
(page 272), and the desire for the esteem 
of others (page 305), are too deeply rooted in the 
nature of man to be either ignored or slighted. The 
general welfare of the race demands that men should 
labor for one another, and we find that the highest 
elements in man’s nature are strengthened and im¬ 
proved by a faithful discharge of all our duties in 
this direction. 

The Egyptians, in their hieroglyphics, expressed 

470 


















































0 


* 


ANALYSIS. 471 

the unprofitableness of a selfish life by a single mill¬ 
stone, which, being alone, grinds no meal, though 
with its fellow it would be exceedingly profitable for 
that purpose. Our duties to others can be conven¬ 
iently analyzed, and shown as follows : 


Honesty. 


Honesty in Business. 
-< Mental Honesty. 


" Honorable Shrewdness. 
■< Equal Chances. 
k Pay as You Go. 


Universal Honesty. 


Sympathy. 


Duties to 
Others. 


Gratitude. 


Courtesy. 


{ False Pride and Insolence. 
Politeness. 


Truthfulness. -< 


May we ever Falsify? 
Evil Speaking. 
Exaggeration. 


. Charity. 


' Where and How to Give. 
Forgiveness and Mercy. 















N honest man ’s the noblest work of God,” 
says Pope. He might also have called him 
the rarest work of God; for a thoroughly 
honest man, a man honest in business, 
honest in social life, honest with others 
and honest with himself , seems to be rather 
a rare thing. Animals are not respecters 
of the rights of others and if men will 
allow themselves to listen to the whisper¬ 
ings from the animal side of their natures, they 
will be quite sure to show a tendency to dishonesty. 
They may pay all their debts- to the last cent; 
their word may be as good as their bond; they 
may *not cheat you about anything you are buying 
of them or selling to them; they may even supply 
your lack of knowledge by telling you fairly the 
defects of the thing they have to sell, and the merits 
of the thing they wish to buy of you. But while 
they are honest in everything else, they will defraud 
the government in making out their lists of taxable 
property; or, if they hold official positions, their 
requisitions for stationery and other office supplies 
will be altogether larger than their needs would 
justify; or in some of the manifold relations of 


























HONESTY IN BUSINESS. 


473 


society their integrity will prove weak. It needs no' 
argument to prove that all this is wrong. Every¬ 
body admits that honesty is right, and that every¬ 
thing opposed to it is absolutely wrong. But people 
have a hundred little loop-holes, out of which they 
try to slip in particular cases. 

A separate outline of this subject is presented 
before treating in detail: 


r 


Honesty. < 


Honesty in Business. 
Mental Honesty. 


r Honorable Shrewdness. 

Equal Chances. 

[ Pay as You Go. 


Universal Honesty. 


Honesty in Business. 

Probably the first, simplest and most universally 
acknowledged requirement of an honest business 
man, is that he shall pay his debts. But a very 
great many refuse to fulfill the requirement; if they 
owe you a debt and you have not legal evidence of 
it, they refuse to pay, because they know that no 
course in common law can compel them. In all 
moral right, they are just as much bound to pay the 
money they owe upon a verbal promise, as that for 
which they have given note and mortgage, but they 
decline doing it, simply because the debt cannot be 

t 

proved upon them and they can escape it. If a 
mistake has been made in the calculations of a bar- 





474 


HONESTY. 


gain, they will not rectify it, although the mutual 
understanding was clear for the amount rightly due. 
But we will not stop longer upon this point, for such 
men are the outlaws of every business community, 
and it is not long before the people find them out 
and utterly refuse to trust them in any way. 

v 

HONORABLE SHREWDNESS. 

It is not so with the shrewd man, who always does 
as he promises, but always tries to get the best end 
of every bargain by fair means or foul. He seems 
to be held in high honor as the embodiment of 
sharpness. He is proud of his acuteness. You will 
often hear him boasting about his great bargains, 
and glorying over his tremenduous shrewdness in 
trade. There can be no doubt that this is a false 
state of public opinion. Fraud and treachery ought 
not to be elevated to the position of demi-gods, 
while honesty and simple-heartedness are laughed at 

‘V 

as evidences of “greenness.” The day may come 
when it will appear that after all the swindler was 
“greener” than the swindled. That quaint philoso¬ 
pher, Josh Billings, has said, “Beware ov the man 
who iz prouder ov hiz smartness than he iz of hiz 
honesty.” 

AN EQUAL CHANCE. 

The excuse commonly urged in palliation of cheat¬ 
ing is, that all persons have equal chance; that it is 
generally understood that every person will get as 


AN EQUAL CHANCE. 


475 


much as he can, and give as little as he can ; that it 
is a game of diamond cut diamond. Surely this is 
no valid excuse. I have no right to do wrong 
merely because I give some one else the privilege 
of doing a counter-balancing wrong. My duty is to 
find out what is right, and then do it, regardless of 
what other people may be in the habit of doing, or 
of what they may have the permission of society to> 
do. Besides, the man with whom I am dealing may 
have a conscience not quite so lax as mine ; he may 
not feel himself at liberty to cheat, or he may not 
know how to cheat, and in either case he has not 
the equal chance I talk about. 

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF IGNORANCE. 

There is a very nice question in connection with 
honesty in trade, namely: Is a man in duty bound to 
supply the deficiencies in his neighbor’s knowledge 
when engaged in trade with him ? For illustration : 
it is said that Rothschild, the great London banker of 
half a century ago, anticipating the battle of Waterloo,, 
and knowing the great effect that a decisive battle 
would have upon the prices of government securities, 
was himself present at the fight. He had posted relays 
of horses at intervals of a few miles, and as soon as 
he had seen the defeat of Napoleon, he traveled as fast 
as his fresh horses could carry him, reaching London 
nearly two days in advance of the official messengers, 
there being no railroads or telegraph at that time. 
The people were very anxious and fearful, and hence 


4/6 


HONESTY. 


government securities were low. Rothschild bought 
up all he could of them, and made a great sum by 
the rise in prices that of course followed the news 
of England’s victory. Now the question is, did Roths¬ 
child do right, or was it his duty to inform the people 
of the battle and its result ? There are writers on 
ethics who would claim that the action was morally 
wrong, and that he had no right to take advantage 
of the ignorance of the people concerning the battle. 
But such a view chills much active enterprise. If 
he did not in any way excite or seek to excite 
their fears, he had a perfect right to take all advan¬ 
tage of his superior enterprise and foresight. He was 
not violating any trust, because people did not depend, 
and had no right to depend upon him for informa¬ 
tion. The holders of the bonds were as competent 
as he was to judge of their value, had they but taken 

« 

equal care to learn the circumstances. 

Had Rothschild been employed by the govern¬ 
ment in any way, and had then taken advantage of 
his knowledge gained in this capacity, it would have 
been different. But his superior information in this 
•case was his own private expense and enterprise. The 
boundary line is narrow, but to me it seems perfectly 
distinct, between the action of Rothschild in this 
case, and that of a merchant who does not expose 
the defects of his wares. The distinction has already 
been pointed out. In the merchant’s case, the cus¬ 
tomer, comparatively ignorant, and excusably so, of 
the articles dealt in by the merchant, relies upon 


TAKING ADVANTAGE OF IGNORANCE. 477 

him for correct information as to the quality and 
value of the goods he wishes to purchase, and it is 
a gross betrayal of confidence if he withholds facts 
essential to that information. The cost of the article 
to the merchant is, however, immaterial to the pur¬ 
chaser. The fact that the merchant got it cheap 
does not make it any the less valuable to him. If 
I wish to buy a diamond, it makes no difference to 
me whether the seller paid a thousand dollars for it 
at a jeweler’s, or found it while walking for pleasure. 
The price I can afford to pay for it is the same in 

either case; it is in no way affected by the amount 

of profit to the seller. Hence I have no right to 

ask its cost to him, but may only demand that he 

1 1 

shall correctly inform me of its quality, weight and 
value at current prices. 

It has been said that “honesty is the best policy, 
and it has also been said that “ honesty is no policy 
at all.” Both sayings, though apparently opposites, 
are in a sense true. Honesty is not policy, because 
true honesty must have a deeper spring than mere 
policy. True honesty must do the right, so far as 
known, under all circumstances, whether it seems 
politic or impolitic to do it. Honesty has in its 
nature nothing to do with prudence or policy. On 
the other hand, it has been noticed that honesty is 
not compelled to wait for another world for its 
reward ; it is paid in this. The arts of deceit and 
cunning continually grow weaker and less effectual 
and serviceable to them that use them; whereas 


478 


HONESTY. 


integrity gains strength by use; and the more and 
longer any man practices it, the greater service it 
does him, by confirming his reputation, and encour¬ 
aging those with whom he hath to do, to repose the 
greatest trust and confidence in him; which is an 

"O 

unspeakable advantage in the business and affairs of 
life. Men of great wealth are usually men of strict 
honesty (taking the word in its commercial sense), 
and very often their honesty, more than anything else, 
was the beginning and cause of their prosperity. 
Innumerable examples might be given. 

Probably the wealthiest family in the world is that 
of the Rothschilds. The commencement of their won¬ 
derful career is said to have been this: In 1806, 
Napoleon ordered that the sovereigns of Brunswick 
and Hesse-Cassel should be deprived of their estates. 
The landgrave of Hesse-Cassel had a very large 
fortune in coined money, which he desired to secrete. 
He was afraid to trust it with any of his subjects, and 
finally put it in the care of Meyer Anselm Rothschild, 
a banker of Frankfort-on-the-Main, because he could 
think of no other person so worthy of confidence. 
Rothschild’s reward for keeping it was that he might 
use it without having to pay interest. He managed 
carefully and made large profits from it. After the 
first fall of Napoleon, the landgrave returned to his 
country, and was about to recall the money. When 
Napoleon escaped, however, he again urged Roths¬ 
child to keep the enormous fund, and pay two per 
cent for the use of it, and this arrangement was 


TAKING ADVANTAGE OF IGNORANCE. 


479 


made and kept until the landgrave’s death, when the 
banker returned the money, declining to keep it longer. 
It was their fidelity in this matter that gave the house 
of Rothschild its start; and throughout their career, 
its members have adhered to the same strict honesty. 

Commodore Vanderbilt, the founder of the greatest 
private fortune in America, began life as a boatman ; 
and he was soon able to get all the best contracts, 
and at prices largely in advance of those of some 
of his rivals, simply because he could always be 
depended upon to do exactly what he promised to 
do. One of the principal causes of the success of 
A. T. Stewart, who had the largest fortune ever won 
in mercantile business, was the fact that a child could 
go to his store and get just as good an article, and 
get it just as cheap, as the most experienced trader. 
He required his clerks to be absolutely honest in all 
their dealings with customers. 

One reason why Lincoln was elected President of 
the United States, and has always been so wonder¬ 
fully popular all over the world, was the fact that he 
was “ Honest Abe.” It is sad that honesty is so scarce 
an article that it makes available capital for a race 
for the highest office in the country. It ought to 
come a little cheaper than that. We ought to be 
able to take it for granted that all candidates for 
positions of honor and trust possessed this first of 
all requirements, honesty. But we are sometimes 
almost forced to feel that we must consider ourselves 
fortunate if we do not get thieves and swindlers in 


4S0 


HONESTY. 


our highest offices, and we are compelled to cry out 
in the words of Whittier: 

“ Praise and thanks for an honest man! ” 

PAY AS YOU CxO. 

“Mr. President,” said John Randolph in the 
Senate one day; “ I have discovered the philoso¬ 
pher’s stone ! It consists of four short words of 
homely English, Pay as you go /” And well he 
might call his short and homely maxim the philoso¬ 
pher’s stone, for it converts into gold all that it 
touches. Few men have incomes so small that, 
acting upon this advice with due care, they may 
not live in the enjoyment of reasonable physical 
comfort, and of that spiritual luxury worth more 
than any external convenience, which springs from 
perfect independence. Few men, on the other hand, 
have incomes so large, that the pernicious habit of 
consuming things not paid for may not poison their 
every pleasure, and render their lives one long suc¬ 
cession of miseries. The man involved in debt knows 
not the joy of looking the world squarely in the 
face and saying: “ I owe you nothing.” There must 
be always a timorous dread of meeting his creditor, 
and a fear that he may be called upon to pay, and 
be shamed in his inability to do so. The man who 
buys on credit feels obliged to trade always at the 
same place, whether it is the most desirable place 
or not. The man who pays as he goes, has the 


PAY AS YOU GO. 


481 


world open to choose from. He walks with the 
sovereign right of the honest man into whatsoever 
shop he will, always welcome, always getting the 
best, and getting it at the lowest price. His sleep 
is sweeter, his meat is more toothsome, his clothes 
feel easier, his joys are more ecstatic, and his sorrows 
are lighter than those of the debtor. 

Paying of debts is, next to the grace of God, the 
best means in the world to deliver you from a thou- 
sand temptations to sin and vanity. Pay your debts, 
and you will not have the wherewithal to buy a costly 
toy or a pernicious pleasure. Pay your debts, and 
you will have nothing to lose to a gamester. In 
short, pay your debts, and you will of necessity abstain 
from many indulgences that war against the spirit, 
and bring you into captivity to sin, and cannot fail 
to end in your utter destruction, both of soul and 
body. 

Avoid debt, then, with religious care. If you 
never owe anything, you are sure never to be dis¬ 
honestly avoiding payments, and never to be harassed 
by creditors. 

“ The chain of a debtor is heavy and cold, 

Its links, all corrosion and rust; 

Gild it o’er as you will, it is never of gold; 

Then spurn it aside with disgust.” 

It is said that a skilled detective can always tell 
a criminal at sight. The consciousness of guilt never 
leaves him, and wherever he goes, whatever disguise 
he may assume, his face is marked by a furtive, hunted 
31 


482 


HONESTY. 


look. He cannot look you in the eyes; it seems to 
him that you read his guilty soul through and through 
at every glance. And this is true, not only of great 
criminals, but also of those whose offenses have been 
less. Something of that same timid, sly look will 
inevitably cling to them. A man feels so much 
stronger and manlier, he respects himself so much 
more, when he is conscious of having been fair and 
honest in all his dealings than when he has a linger¬ 
ing sense of some mean act. “ Let honesty be as 
the breath of thy soul,” says Franklin; “and never 
forget to have a penny when all thy expenses are 
enumerated and paid; then shalt thou reach the point 
of happiness, and independence shall be thy shield 
and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy 
soul walk upright, nor stoop to the silken wretch 
because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse because 
the hand that offers it wears a ring set with diamonds.” 



Honesty has thus far been spoken of only in its 
connection with money affairs; but its sphere is a 


much wider one. It permeates all the affairs of social 


life. Our honesty or dishonesty may make itself felt 
in a hundred different ways. Are you stingy in 
according to your neighbor his meed of praise for 
the good he has done? Do you withhold from him 
the recognition of his good qualities, his courage, his 
generosity, his honesty, his industry, his learning ? 


MENTAL HONESTY. 


483 


Do you try to dodge the debt of gratitude you owe 
him for his good will and his practical kindness to 
you? If so, then you are dishonest, and weakly 
dishonest. Do you try to pass in the world for a 
more religious man than you are ? Then you are 
that basest of creatures, the hypocrite. Do you 
pretend to greater wealth, more extensive information, 
or higher ability than is really yours? That, too, is 
dishonesty. Be honest in all these things. Pay to 
every man his just dues of recognition as well as of 
money; do not attempt to seem what you are not. 
Be honest and frank, even with your enemy. Above 
all, be honest with yourself. Self-deception is most 
baleful in its effects; it will cripple all your efforts, 
and render them unproductive of good for yourself 
or anybody else. Examine yourself carefully, and 
find out just what you are; then make no attempt 
to flatter yourself or convince yourself that you possess 
desirable traits of character which really form no part 
of your nature. 


Universal Honesty. 

We have already seen that the word duty means 
a thing owed, and that hence the fulfillment of duty 
is nothing more nor less than the payment of debt. 
Thus honesty lies at the very bottom of all right 
doing, is the basis and foundation of it, and if we 
would live right lives we must lay this idea of per¬ 
fect honesty next our hearts and make it a part of 


484 


HONESTY. 


our inmost souls. Hillel, a famous Jewish Rabbi, 
who lived a few years before the time of Christ, 
was once asked in derision by a heathen whether he 
could teach the whole law while standing on one 
foot. “ What you would not like done to yourself, 
do not to your neighbor,” he answered; “this is the 
whole law: all the rest is commentary on it — go 
learn this.” Christ himself strengthened the com¬ 
mand and made it active instead of passive, saying: 

“ Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that 

men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” 

“These are the precepts of right,” says Justinian; 

“ to live honestly, not to injure another, to render 
to each one his own.” Whoever squares his life by 
these rules, he is the perfectly honest man, and no 
other. He alone reaches the full dignity of man¬ 
hood and makes out of himself all that the Creator 
intended him to be. 




YMF/1THY. 


HE highest mode of life is not that of the 
hermit. Still less is it that of him who 
lives in the midst of men, but who seems 
unconscious of their existence, except at ' 
times when he can turn them to his advan 
tage. Such a man lives in a cold, deadly 
atmosphere which soon kills his higher spiritual 
nature. A life of that kind is a corrupt soil which 
can bring forth nothing good, but is crowded with 
weeds and thistles and thickly strewn with rocks. 
If wheat is sown on it the harvest will be nothing 
but tares. People are of necessity brought into more 
or less close contact by their social and business 
life; and it is fitting that they should live in fellow¬ 
ship, and have for each other a sympathy, a fellow- 
feeling. 

The political economists have shown that what 
benefits one person in the world of commerce, bene¬ 
fits all; that my neighbor’s prosperity is properly a 
matter upon which I may congratulate myself. Hence 
it is not only uncomfortable to envy others and hate 
them on account of their prosperity, but it is foolish. 
And it is likewise foolish to rejoice in the troubles 

of others, since their ill-fortune concerns us as well 

485 











486 


SYMPATHY. 


How utterly uncalled for then is that feeling of 
hostility which so many manifest toward others, and 
how unwise also is a cold indifference to the weal 
or woe of our fellow men ! 

“ When I look into the frame and constitution of 
my own mind,” says Addison, “ there is no part of 
it which I observe with greater satisfaction than that 
tenderness and concern which it bears for the good 
and happiness of mankind. My own circumstances 
are, indeed, so narrow and scanty that I should taste 
but very little pleasure should I receive it only from 
those enjoyments which are in my own possession; 
but by this great tincture of humanity, which I find 
in all my thoughts and reflections, I am happier than 
any single person can be with all the wealth, strength, 
beauty and success that can be conferred upon a 
mortal, if he> only relishes such a proportion of these 
blessings as vested in himself and in his own private 
property. By this means, every man who does him¬ 
self any real service does me a kindness. I come in 
for my share in all the good that happens to a man 
of merit and virtue, and partake of many gifts of 
fortune and power that I was never born to. There 
is nothing in particular in which I so much rejoice 
as the deliverance of good and generous spirits out 
of dangers, difficulties, and distresses.” 

We are much happier by sharing the pleasures 
and pains of others, and allowing them to share 
ours. It has been well said, that to share a joy with 
another person, multiplies it, and that to share a 


SYMPATHY. 


487 


sorrow with another, divides it. Thus the sympathetic 
man is doubly the gainer by his sympathy — his joys 
are greater, and his sorrows are less. 

“ Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner 
of his joy,” says Jeremy Taylor; “a friend shares 
my sorrow and makes it but a moiety; but he swells 
my joy and makes it double. For so two channels 
divide the river, and lessen it into rivulets, and make 
it fordable, and apt to be drunk up by the first revels 
of the Sirian star; but two torches do not divide, 
but increase, the flame : and though my tears are the 
sooner dried up when they run on my friend’s cheeks 
in the furrows of compassion, yet when my flame 
hath kindled his lamp, we unite the glories and make 
them radiant, like the golden candlesticks that burn 
before the throne of God, because they shine by 
numbers, by unions, and confederations of light and 
joy. There is a warm, kindly glow about sympathy 
which is entirely absent in calculating selfishness, and 
than which no feeling is more delightful.” 

“Man is dear to man; the poorest poor 
Long for some moments in a weary life, 

When they can know and feel that they have been 
Themselves the fathers and dealers-out 
Of some small blessings: have been kind to such 
As needed kindness, for the single cause, 

Tha* we have all of us one human heart.” 

We often do more good by our sympathy than by 
our labors, and render to the world a more lasting 
service by absence of jealousy and recognition of 



488 


SYMPATHY. 


merit than we could ever render by the straining 
efforts of personal ambition. A man may lose posi¬ 
tion, influence, wealth and even health, and yet live 
on in comfort, if he is resigned; but there is one 
thing without which life becomes a burden — that is 
human sympathy. 

A man who for any cause fails to secure the sym¬ 
pathy of his fellows, will have a sad journey through 
life. No matter how firmly we may believe in the 
righteousness of our cause, and how much confidence 
we may have in our deserts, if others do not sym¬ 
pathize with our aims and our work, very much of 
the pleasure of our well-doing is lost. Admiration 
and awe-struck astonishment will not take the place 
of genuine sympathy. During Christ’s ministry he 
was constantly attended by great crowds of people 
who gathered, some to see his miracles, some to be 
healed of their bodily disorders, and others to bring 
their afflicted friends before the wondrous physician, 
the very hem of whose garment possessed the power 
of healing all diseases. But out of these crowds 
not one understood his spiritual aims or sympathized 
with them, and his life was one of continual sadness, 
even before the persecutions of the Rabbis began. 
And the biographies of almost all great men will 
illustrate the same fact. The lives of nearly all have 
been to a greater or less extent embittered by a 
lack of sympathy with the ideas and aims which 
they regarded as great and vital to the well-being 
of humanity. 


SYMPATHY. 


489 


Said Joseph de Maistre, at the end of his life: 
“ How few are those whose passage upon this foolish 
planet has been marked by actions really good and 
useful. I bow myself to the earth before him of 
whom it can be said, Per transivit benefaciendo (He 
has gone about doing good); who has succeeded in 
instructing, consoling, relieving his fellow creatures; 
who has made real sacrifices for the sake of doing 
good ; those heroes of silent charity who hide them¬ 
selves and expect nothing in this world. But what 
are the common run of men like? and how many 
men are there in a thousand who can ask them¬ 
selves without terror, ‘ What have I done in this 
world? wherein have I advanced the general work? 
and what of me do I leave behind for good or for 
evil.’ ” 

Mr. Collyer tells the following story, which well 
illustrates the power of sympathy. “Away off, I 
believe in Edinburgh, two gentlemen were standing 
at the door of a hotel one very cold day, when a 
little boy, with a poor, thin, blue face, his feet bare 
and red with cold, and with nothing to cover him 
but a bundle of rags, came and said, ‘ Please, sir, 
buy some matches.’ ‘No; I don’t want any,’ said 
the gentleman. ‘But they’re only a penny a box,’ 
the little fellow pleaded. ‘Yes; but you see I don’t 
want a box.’ ‘Then I’ll gie ye twa boxes for a 
penny,’ the boy said at last.” And so, to get rid 
of him, the gentleman, who tells the story in an 
English paper, says, “ I bought a box, but then I 


490 


SYMPATHY. 


found I had no change, so I said. ‘ I’ll buy a box 
to-morrow.’ ‘Oh, do buy them the nicht,’ the boy 
pleaded again; ‘I’ll run and get ye the change; for 
I’m very hungry.’ So I gave him the shilling, and 
he started away. I waited for him, but no boy came. 
Then I thought I had lost my shilling; but still 
there was that in the boy’s face I trusted, and I 
did not like to think badly of him. 

“Well, late in the evening, a servant came and said 

a little boy wanted to see me. When he was brought 

in, I found it was a smaller brother of the boy who got 

my shilling, but, if possible, still more ragged, and 

poor, and thin. He stood a moment diving into his 

rags as if he were seeking something, and then said, 

‘ Are you the gentleman that bought the matches frae 

Sandie?’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Weel, then, here’s fourpence oot 

o’ yer shillin’. Sandie canna come. He’s no weel. 

A cart ran ower him, and knocked him doon; and 

• 

he lost his bonnet, and his matches, and your eleven¬ 
pence ; and both his legs are broken, and he’s no weel 
at a’, and the doctor says he’ll dee. And that’s a’ he 
can gie ye the noo,’ putting fourpence down on the 
table ; and then the poor child broke down into great 
sobs. So I fed the little man,” the gentleman goes 
on to say, “ and then I went with him to see Sandie. 

“ I found that the two poor little things lived with 
a wretched, drunken step-mother; their own father 
and mother being both dead. I found poor Sandie 
lying on a bundle of shavings ; he knew me as soon 
as I came in and said, ‘ I got the change, sir, and was 


SYMPATHY. 


49 1 


coming back ; and then the horse knocked me down, 
and both my legs are broken. And Reuby, little 
Reuby ! I am sure I am deem’! and who will take 
care o’ ye, Reuby, when I am gane ? What will ye 
do, Reuby?’ Then I took the poor little sufferer’s 
hand, and told him I would always take care of Reuby. 
He understood me, and had just strength to look at 
me as if he would thank me ; then the light went out 
of his blue eyes, and in a moment 

‘ He lay within the light of God, 

Like a babe upon the breast; 

Where the wicked cease from troubling, 

And the weary are at rest.’ ” 

We must not make too much of sympathy, as 
mere feeling. We do in things spiritual as we do 
with hot-house plants. The feeble exotic, beautiful 
to look at, but useless, has costly sums spent on it. 
The hardy oak, a nation’s strength, is permitted to 
grow, scarcely observed, in the fence and copses. 
We prize feeling, and prize its possessor. But feeling 
is only a sickly exotic in itself — a passive quality, 
having in it nothing moral — no temptation, and no 
victory. A man is no more a good man for having 
feeling than he is for having a delicate ear for music, 
or a far-seeing optic nerve. The Son of Man had 
feeling; he could be touched. The tear would start 
from His eyes at the sight of human sorrow. But 
that sympathy was no exotic in his soul, beautiful to 
look at, too delicate for use. Feeling with Him led 




49 2 


SYMPATHY. 


to action : “He went about doing good.” Sympathy 

* 

with Him was this: “Grace to help in time of need.” 

The life of John Howard, the prison reformer, 
furnishes a good example of the practical working of 
sympathy. His attention having been attracted to 
the miserable condition of convicts throughout Europe, 
he spent several years in traveling about from one 
town to another, from one country to another, visit¬ 
ing prisons and relieving the inmates in various ways. 
At Gloucester (in England) he found the castle in 
the most horrible condition. The castle had become 
the jail. It had a common court for all the prisoners, 
male and female. The debtor’s ward had no windows. 
The night room for male felons was close and dark. 
A fever had prevailed in the jail, which carried off 
many of the prisoners. The keeper had no salary. 
The debtors had no allowance of food. In the Epis¬ 
copal city of Ely the accommodation was no better. 
To prevent the prisoners’ escape they were chained 
on their backs to the floor. Several bars of iron were 
placed over them, and an iron collar covered with 
spikes was fastened round their necks. At Norwich, 
the cells were built under ground, and the prisoners 
were given an allowance of straw, which cost a guinea 
a year. The jailor not only had no salary, but he 
paid forty pounds a year to the under-sheriff for his 
situation ! He made his income by extortion. Howard 
wrote a book on “The State of Prisons,” testified 
before a parliamentary committee, and in various 
other ways attracted public attention to the subject. 


SYMPATHY. 


493 


His labors resulted in many changes of laws which 
very much improved the condition of the prisoners. 
In the course of twelve years he had traveled forty- 
two thousand miles, and had expended a hundred 
and fifty thousand dollars in his work of humanity. 
He visited all Europe to dive into r the depths of 
dungeons ; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; 
to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take 
the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression and 
contempt; to remember the forgotten ; to attend the 
neglected; to visit the forsaken; to compare and 
collect the distresses of all men in all countries. His 
plan is original, and it is as full of genius as it is of 
humanity. It is a voyage of discovery, a circum¬ 
navigation of charity; and already the benefit of his 
labor is felt more or less in every country. 

Florence Nightingale, the good “Lady with the 
Lamp,” to whom so many soldiers owe their lives, 
was another practical sympathizer. Mrs. Chisholm, 
also, who devoted her life to helping poor young 
women in England, to migrate to Australia and other 
places where they might find good homes and be free 
from the dangers that, in all wealthy and populous 
countries, surround young women destitute of money 
and protecting friends. 

Thomas Wright was a foundry-hand in Manchester, 
receiving only about seventeen dollars a week. His 
sympathies were aroused in behalf of prisoners whose 
terms of punishment had expired, and who were now 
seeking employment that they might live honest lives, 


494 


SYMPATHY. 


but who, being looked upon with suspicion, failed to 
find work, and were compelled to return to a life of 
crime. He made it the business of his life to assist 
such ; and often, when he could not otherwise obtain 
employment for them, he pledged himself as security 
for their honesty. Others were aided by him in going 
to foreign countries, where they might begin anew, 
and be free from the shadow of their crime. In this 
way he succeeded in reforming a great many men and 
making useful and honorable citizens of them. The 
following is only one case of the many: A man 
who had been undergoing penal servitude at Portland, 
was discharged, and repaired to Manchester with a 
ticket-of-leave and a letter from the chaplain to 
Thomas Wright. Employment was found for him as 
a scavenger. Mr. Wright had him promoted to be 
a mender of roads; and here also his conduct was 
approved. He obtained admission for him to the 
late Canon Stowell’s Sunday and week-day night 
schools, in both of which he became a teacher. He 
showed so much capacity for learning that Canon 
Stowell felt a great interest in him. The canon was 
made acquainted with his antecedents. Nevertheless, 
he made arrangements for “reading” with him, and 
in due time the Portland convict was ordained a 
clergyman. 

i 

One man who had been assisted by Wright to 
emigrate to America, and had prospered in honorable 
life, wrote back to his benefactor, enclosing a contri¬ 
bution for a reformatory institution and saying : 


SYMPATHY. 


495 


“To your never-to-be-forgotten fatherly aid I owe all 
my success. You were indeed my best, my kindest, 
and my sole advising friend on this earth. You res¬ 
cued me from a life of vice by your own unaided 
help. When all others had turned their faces away 
from me as a miscreant and a vagabond, you, like the 
prodigal’s father of old, welcomed me back to the paths 
of virtue and integrity of life, consoling my youthful 
heart with the hope of brighter days yet in store, and 
blending your fatherly counsel with a still purer hope 
beyond the grave. God bless you, dear father! God 
bless you for all your kindness ! Tears of kind remem¬ 
brances fall from my cheeks as I think upon all your 
noble efforts for your poor fellow-men.” It was sym¬ 
pathy that moved these, and it is sympathy that origi¬ 
nates every deed of philanthropy, every attempt to 
better the condition of the poor, or the degraded. 

There is nothing like the balm of a sympathizing 
soul, when one comes to us. There are some ears 
that hunger for sympathizing words ; there are others 
that, while deaf to these words, are not insensible to 
presence. To hold your peace in the shadow of 
another’s grief is oftentimes more balm and consola¬ 
tion than anything else you can do. When a man 
is in trouble, and it seems as though the world is 
sweeping away from him, go and stand by his side, 
and he will never forget that — not if he is gener¬ 
ous. If anybody has stood by you in a crisis, and 
faced the world with you and for you, the memorial 
in your heart ought to be as deep and strong as life 



496 SYMPATHY. 

itself, and forever. When a man has come to bank¬ 
ruptcy, and suspicion, and trouble, and shame, that 
is the time for friendship, and that is the place for 
friendship to show what sympathy can do — what 
strength it can give, what despair it can drive away, 
what elevation and inspiration it can rekindle in 
men’s hearts. Ah! when the heart has been bruised 
through and through, there is no poultice like another 
heart put right on it, and held there. When men 
have been lost to virtue, have thrown away their 
chances, and life itself is a drug, it is very seldom 
that you will reclaim such persons by penal institu¬ 
tions. Yet a man may be brought out from the 
valley and shadow of death, and brought back to 
virtue from all defiling crimes, if only there is some¬ 
body that will make atonement for him; somebody 
that will see him daily; somebody that, when he has 
fallen again contrary to all promises, will not be dis¬ 
couraged ; somebody that will supply his pressing 
wants; somebody that will say to him, “ I have 
more hope for you than you have”; somebody that 
will not let him go; somebody that will even say to 
him, “ Though you go down at last through the 
gates of death in darkness, I will not leave you, 
nor forsake you, till the very last gasp; you shall 
be reformed; I will bear you up and out.” Oh! 
how many would be brought back if there were only 
somebody to take them, to love them, to be. com¬ 
passionate with them, to be patient with them all 
the time, and to lead them ! It must be a desperate 



SYMPATHY. 497 

case in which a living, loving heart is not medicine 
enough for the diseases of a vicious life. 

Although we cannot love their weakness, yet we 
must love the weak, and bear with their infirmities 
and their misfortunes, not breaking the bruised reed. 
Infants must not be turned out of the family because 
they cry, and are unquiet and troublesome ;* though 
they be peevish and forward, yet we must bear it 
with gentleness and patience, as we do the forward¬ 
ness of the sick; if they revile we must not revile 
again, but must seek gently to restore them, not¬ 
withstanding their censures. 

This patience is far too rare. We do not make 
allowances enough for our fellows, but sweepingly 
condemn those whom we ought to cheer with our 
sympathy. If we are out of temper ourselves we 
plead the weather, or a headache, or our natural 
temperament, or aggravating circumstances; we are 
never at a loss for an excuse for ourselves; why 
should not the same ingenuity be used by our charity 
in inventing apologies and extenuations for others? 
It is a pity to carry on the trade of apology-making 
entirely for home consumption ; let us supply others. 
True, they are very provoking, but if we suffered 
half as much as our irritable friends have to endure, 
we should perhaps be even more aggravated. 

But there is one danger in a feeling of fellowship 
which must not be lost to view. Our love for another, 
or our sympathy for his weakness, must never lead 
us for one moment into tolerating a fault itself. Love 


32 


49 8 


SYMPATHY. 


and forgive always but never give • companionship 
in any evil act to prove the sincerety of your for¬ 
giveness. When cripples laugh at us for walking 
upright, we simply pity their folly, and if they become 
our companions, would it be sensible for us to hobble 
our limbs that we be obliged to walk as they do ? 

Let us cherish sympathy. By attention and exer¬ 
cise it may be improved in every man. It prepares 
the mind for receiving the impressions of virtue; and 
without it there can be no true politeness. Nothing 
is more odious than that insensibility which wraps 
a man up in himself and his own concerns, and pre¬ 
vents his being moved with either the joys or sorrows 
of another. 

9 

“Sympathy glories humanity.” Its synonym is 
love. It goes forth to meet the wants and necessities 
of the sorrow-stricken and oppressed. Wherever 
there is cruelty, or ignorance, or misery, sympathy 
stretches forth its hand to console and alleviate. The 
sight of grief, the sound of a groan, takes hold of 
the sympathetic mind, and will not let it go. Out 
of sympathy and justice, some of the greatest events 
of modern times have emanated. The abolition of 
slavery in England, America and France; the educa¬ 
tion of the untaught; the spread of Sunday-schools; 
the efforts for the spread of temperance ; the improv- 
ment of low, degraded, or suffering humanity every¬ 
where, which in the olden times received very little 
attention; these are some of the high and holy 
results of human sympathy. 




'-o - ' 7gg7 



■ Z-ZJ^r ■ -sVcv- 




9 


T seems scarcely possible for a person to 
receive a favor from another and not have 
at least some feeling of thankfulness. It 
is one of the most painful forms of dis¬ 
ordered Sensibility — the insanity, not of 
the Intellect, but of the feeling — which 
shows itself in the entire indifference and 
apathy with which the kindest attentions 
are received, or even worse, the ill con¬ 
cealed and hardly suppressed hatred which 
is felt even for the generous benefactor. 

The lack of gratitude for a kindness 
arises in the mind in the following manner: 
Suppose a man is dishonest enough to 
avoid paying his debts in every way that he can. 
Such a man dislikes to see the person to whom 
he owes a debt, and soon learns to almost hate his 
creditors. He even studies them to find in their lives 
some bad feature, so he may have a show of an 
excuse for his ill-will. Evidences of this feeling are 
too often seen. The man of such a mind would 
never do any one a kindness of any consequence 
unless quite sure of a full repayment, and it is 

impossible for him to believe that anyone else could 

499 
































500 


GRATITUDE. 


give a favor when none is expected in return. His 

soul is too mean to understand the true nature of 

\ 

kindness. He greedily accepts all the good he can 
get, and then, thinking that his benefactor is expect¬ 
ing payment, or at least a continued feeling of obli¬ 
gation on his part, his pitiful little heart begins to 
shun the very man who befriended him. 

It is, indeed, one of the saddest mistakes which the 
human Sensibilities can make, for nothing will bind 
our friends closer to us in genuine sympathy than 
the thankful acceptance of a well-meant kindness 
offered us; and to owe a debt of gratitude, instead 
of at all lessening our independence of mind, really 
strengthens our character and sweetens the heart. 
The truly good and great are never guilty of this 
grave error. 

“Ingratitude is always a sort of weakness. I have 
never known that men of consequence were ungrate¬ 
ful,” says Goethe. 

Duties are reciprocal. If I owe you a duty, you 
owe me one in return. If you are in distress, it is my 
duty to help you to the extent of my ability, and on 
the other hand, having helped you, you owe me a debt 
of gratitude, which you should .discharge upon every 
opportunity. The mere formal “thank you,” though 
certainly it and other like courtesies should not be 
neglected, is not enough. You ought to do me a 
substantial service the first time it is in your power 
to do so, not to pay for my service to you, but merely 
as evidence of your true gratitude. This is a delicate 


GRATITUDE. 


501 


matter. I have no claim upon you. If I do you good 
in the hope of receiving something from you, I am 
no longer doing it as a kindness, but as a speculation ; 
and gratitude does not play any part in the transaction. 
But the fact that I cannot claim anything, does not 
release you from the obligation to return my favor. 
No rules can be laid down in this matter; it must be 
governed entirely by a healthy and enlightened moral 
sense. A consciousness of rule and of well defined 
obligation would crush all the life out of both charity 
and gratitude. 

Nothing can be more beautiful than a constant and 
unselfish interchange of favors between persons who 
are brought into connection with each other in any 
way. Especially ought members of the same family 
to keep up this practice. It will infuse into the do¬ 
mestic life a degree of warmth and pleasantness that 
cannot be obtained in any other way. It is a sovereign 
panacea against the quarrels and bickerings that mar 
the happiness of so many families and blight the 
characters and prospects of so many young people. 



COURTESY. 


FALSE PRIDE AND INSOLENCE. 

S we desire to be treated decently and with 
respect by others, it is our duty to treat 
them in the same way. We have no right 
to bruise their feelings by adopting toward 
them a harsh, contemptuous, or careless 
manner. 

And our duty in this matter does not 
depend upon the person. Men are not, 
in most respects, born free and equal. A 
has more brains than B; and C’s morals 
are better than those of D, while, perhaps, E 

is superiqr to each of them in all respects. They 
are not alike, then; there is an infinite diversity 

of natural and acquired gifts; in infinitely different 
degrees are men worthy of our esteem and admiration. 
But in one thing, they stand upon a footing of abso¬ 
lute equality — they have equal claim to kind and 
considerate treatment at our hands. The ignorant 
black laborer who does the menial work about your 
house, the person who serves you in any way, and 
the beggar who seeks alms at your door, are just as 

much entitled to gentle words, a patient hearing, and 

502 

















COURTESY. 


503 


forbearance with their defects, as a college president 
or a United States senator would be; and it is even 
more blame to your character, as a gentleman or lady, 
to refuse these little marks of attention to your 
inferiors than it would be to refuse them to your 
equals or superiors. “As the sword of the best- 
tempered metal is the most flexible,” says Fuller, “so 
the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in 
their behavior to their inferiors.” 

A number of false notions prevail concerning court¬ 
esy, as well as other forms of beauty. One of these 
notions is, that roughness necessarily accompanies 
strength. It does not. It is the imperfectly made 
and badly cared-for engine that squeaks and jars; 
the mightiest ones, those that propel enormous masses 
of machinery, are smooth and noiseless in their mo¬ 
tions. Perfect steel is smooth as glass; when the 
rust begins to eat into and destroy it, it gets rough. 
The polished granite column is not less strong than 
the rough and ragged granite rock upon the mount¬ 
ain side. A will as hard and solid as adamant may 
lie behind a soft and pleasant word, yet always be 
there when needed. The hand of steel may wear a 
velvet glove. Those who have read the autobiog¬ 
raphy of David Crockett, will remember the incident 
of the Texas bee-hunter, the bravest man in all that 
wild western country during the turbulent times of 
the Texan revolution, and who was yet as mild and 
gentle as a maiden in love. Was Chevalier Bayard 
any the less a knight “sans peur” because he was 


504 


COURTESY. 


also a knight “sans reproche”?* Did Sir Philip Sid¬ 
ney fight any the less bravely at the battle of Zutphen 
because he was the pattern of all chivalric gentleness 
and courtesy? Did the famous regiment of New York 
thugs and shoulder-hitters in our civil war distinguish 
itself for valor and strength above the regiments of 
mild-mannered gentlemen ? 

“Ill seems (said he) if he so valiant be, 

That he should be so stern to stranger wight; 

For seldom yet did living creatures see 

That courtesy and manhood ever disagree.”— Spenser. 

Pride and egotism are very good things. “ All 
men are egotists,” says Goethe in his “ Gross-Coptha ” ; 
u only a novice, only a fool can wish to change them. 
Only one who does not know himself, will deny that 
it is even so in his own heart.” The man who is 
not proud, and, in one sense, egotistical, is very 
much to be pitied; he will never accomplish anything 
of value. The world owes more than figures will 
count to its egotists, past and present. But egotism 
is like any other good thing in that when it passes 
its proper boundaries, it becomes an evil. The Miss¬ 
issippi river benefits the country through which it 
passes more than any other stream; still, in times of 
high water, when it overflows its banks and carries 
death and devastation through wide stretches of pop¬ 
ulous territory, it is about as harmful a thing as could 
well be imagined. The bank which marks the proper 

* il Sans pair et sans reproche ” (without fear and without reproach), a 
phrase applied by somebody to Chevalier Bayard. 


COURTESY. 


505 


extension of pride and egotism is the point where-, 
by going farther they would begin to encroach upon 
the rights, dignities, or sentiments, or feelings of 
other people. Thus far they should go, but no' 
farther. A person who is puffed up with unreason¬ 
able pride, and is haughty and supercilious in his- 
relations with others, is as contemptible on the one 
hand, as a person who has no mind of his own, but 
vacillates weakly from one opinion to another, from 
one counsel to another, is, on the other hand, pitiable. 

But not only is this negative duty of abstaining 
from evil imposed upon us; we have also a cor¬ 
responding positive duty to perform. There are a 
hundred occasions every day in the life of each of 
us, where the spirit of courtesy may properly be 
exhibited. Opportunities for great deeds of kind¬ 
ness do not often occur, but we need not wait for 
them. Great deeds make but a small part of the 
wonderful sum of existence. It is the little acts, 
unostentatiously performed, that so much sweeten 
our lives — the giving of a draught of fresh water, 
the proffer of an easy chair, the present of a bouquet 
of flowers, the soothing word and glance of sympathy 
in time of sorrow, the graceful sign of appreciation, 
all these and thousands more like them, increase- 
human happiness many-fold. 

A catholic love of humanity, and a genuine respect 
for its rights, is the only sound basis for good manners. 
A tender and pure regard for woman, added to this 
among men, furnishes all the spring and impulse 



5°6 


COURTESY. 


necessary for the best and finest forms of polite¬ 
ness. It is not necessary to go to the Latin peoples, 
with their traditions of art and their aesthetic culture; 
it is not necessary to see countries where classics 
are recognized and manners take the form and are 
shaped to the arbitrary rules of etiquette; it is not 
necessary to study manuals of social usage, or sit 
at the feet of Mr. Turveydrop, in order to learn 

good manners, provided a man thoroughly respect 

his fellow, and find himself possessed of that senti¬ 

ment toward woman which makes her his ideal and 
idol. Without this respect and this love, there is 

nothing more hollow and worthless than fine man- 
ners. They become, in this case, simply the disguise 
of an egotist, more or less base and contemptible. 

Everything that is called fashion and courtesy, 
humbles itself before the cause and fountain of honor, 
the creator of titles and dignities, namely, the heart 
of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire, which, 
in all countries and contingencies, will work after its 
kind and conquer and expand all that approaches 
it. This gives new meanings to every fact. This 
impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but its 
own. What is rich ? Are you rich enough to help 
anybody? to succor the unfashionable and the eccen¬ 
tric ? rich enough to make the Canadian in his wagon, 
the itinerant with his consul’s paper which commends 
him “To the charitable,” the swarthy Italian with his 
few broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted 
by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane 


COURTESY. 


507 


or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble 
•exception of your presence and your house from the 
general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel 
that they were greeted with a voice which made 
them both remember and hope ? What is vulgar but 
to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons ? 
What is gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart 
and yours one holiday from the national caution ? 
W ithout the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. 
1 he King of Schiraz could not afford to be so bounti¬ 
ful as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. Osman 
had a humanity so broad and deep that although 
his speech was so bold and free with the Koran as 
to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a 
poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who 
had cut off his beard, or who had been mutilated 
under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but 
fled at once to him; that great heart lay there so 
sunny and hospitable in the center of the country, 
that it seemed as if the instinct of all sufferers drew 
them to his side. And the madness which he har¬ 
bored he did not share. Is not this to be rich ? this 
only to be rightly rich ? 

49 

The truest politeness comes of sincerity. It must 
be the outcome of the heart, or it will make no lasting 
impression; for no amount of polish can dispense with 
truthfulness. The natural character must be allowed 
to appear freed of its singularities and asperities. 
Though politeness, in its best form, should, as Saint 
Francis de Sales says, resemble water — “best when 


5°8 


COURTESY. 


clearest, most simple, and without taste”—yet genius 
in a man will always cover many defects of manner, 
and much will be excused in the strong and original. 
Without genuineness and individuality, human life 
would lose much of its interest and variety, as well 
as its manliness and robustness of character. “In 
all the superior people I have met,” says Emerson, 
“ I notice directness, truth spoken more truly, as if 
everything of obstruction, of malformation, had been 
trained away. What have they to conceal?” 

It is always a mark of gentleness to refrain from 
complaints about the insufficiency of accommodations 
furnished, or favors of any kind shown us, by others. 
It is related of the monk Basle, that, being excom¬ 
municated by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent 
in charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering 
in hell; but such was the eloquence and good humor 
of the monk, that wherever he went he was received 
gladly, and civilly treated even by the most uncivil 
angels; and when he came to discourse with them, 
instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took 
his part and adopted his manners; and even good 
angels came from far to see him, and take up their 
abode with him. The angel that was sent to find 
a place of torment for him attempted to remove him 
to a worse pit, but with no better success; for such 
was the contented spirit of the monk that he found 
something to praise in every place and company, 
though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. 
At last the escorting angel returned with his pris- 


COURTESY. 


509 


oner to those that sent him, saying that no phlege- 
thon could be found that would burn him ; for that 
in whatever condition, Basle remained the same court¬ 
eous good-humored Basle. The legend says his 
sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go 
into heaven, and was canonized as a saint. 


Politeness. 

There is no policy like politeness; and a good 
manner is the best thing in the world, either to get 
one a good name or to supply the want of it. 

Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon 
them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law 
touches us but here and there, and now and then. 
Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, 
exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, 
steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the 
air we breathe in. They give their whole form and 

color to our lives. According to their quality, they 

* 

aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy 
them. A person could better eat with one who did 
not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven 
and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the 
world, but at short distances the senses are despotic. 
The manner of saying or of doing anything goes a 
great way in the value of the thing itself, says Seneca. 
It was well said that a favor that was done harshly 
and with an ill-will, is a stony piece of bread : it is 


POLITENESS. 


510 

necessary for him that is hungry to receive it, but it 
almost chokes a man in the going clown. 

The power of manners is incessant,— an element 
as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any 
country be disguised, and no more in a republic or 
democracy than in a kingdom. No man can resist 
their influence. There are certain manners which are 
learned in good society, of that force that if a person 
have them, he or she must be considered, and is every¬ 
where welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, 
or genius. Give a boy address and accomplishments 
and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes 
wherever he goes. When we reflect on their persua¬ 
sive and cheering force ; how they recommend, prepare 
and draw people together ; how in all clubs, manners 
make the members ; how manners make the fortune 
of the ambitious youth ; that for the most part, his 
manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries 
manners; when we think what keys they are, and 
to what secrets; what high lessons and inspiring 
tokens of character they convey, and what divination 
is required in us for the reading of this fine telegraph, 
we see what range the subject has, and what relations 
to convenience, power and beauty. 

“In the year 1821,” says one gentleman, “I made, 
in London, in a spirit of wager, a very decisive and 
satisfactory experiment as to the effect of ‘civil and 
courteous manners on people of various ranks and 
dispositions. There were in the place a number of 
young Americans, who frequently complained to me 



POLITENESS. 


5” 

of the neglect and rudeness experienced by them from 
citizens to whom they spoke in the streets. They 
asserted, in particular, that, as often as they requested 
directions to any point in the city, toward which they 
were proceeding, they either received an uncivil and 
evasive answer, or no answer at all. I told them 
that my experience on the same subject had been 
exceedingly different; that I had never failed to 
receive a civil reply to my questions — often commu¬ 
nicating the information requested ; and that I could 
not help suspecting that their failure to receive similar 
replies arose, in part at least, if not entirely, from the 
plainness, not to say bluntness, of their manner in 
making their inquiries. The correctness of this 
charge, however, they sturdily denied, asserting that 
their manner of asking for information was good 
enough for those to whom they addressed themselves. 
Unable to convince them by words of the truth of 
my suspicions, I proposed to them the following simple 
and conclusive experiment: Let us take together a 
walk of two or three hours in some of the public 
streets of the city. You shall yourselves designate to 
me the persons to whom I shall propose questions, 
and the subjects also to which the questions shall 
relate; and the only restriction imposed is> that no 
question shall be proposed to any one who shall 
appear to be greatly hurried, agitated, distressed, or 
in any other way deeply preoccupied in mind or body, 
and no one shall speak to the person questioned but 
myself. My proposition being accepted, out we sallied. 



POLITENESS. 


and to work we went: and I continued my experiment 
until my young friends surrendered at discretion, 
frankly acknowledging that my opinion was right, 
and theirs, of course, was wrong; and that, in our 
passage through life, courtesy of address and deport¬ 
ment may be made both a pleasant and powerful 
means to attain our ends and gratify our wishes. 

“ I put questions to more than twenty persons 
of every rank, from the high bred gentleman to the 
servant in livery, and received, in each instance, a 
•courteous, and in most instances, a satisfactory reply. 
If the information asked for was not imparted, the 
individual addressed gave an assurance of his regret 
at being unable to communicate it. What seemed 
most to surprise my friends was, that the individual 
accosted by me almost uniformly imitated my own 
manner. If I uncovered my head, as I usually did 
in speaking to a man of ordinary appearance and 
breeding, he did the same in his reply; and when 
I touched my hat to a liveried coachman or waiting- 
man, his hat was immediately under his arm.” So 
much may be done, and such advantages gained, by 
.simply avoiding coarseness and vulgarity, and being 

well-bred and agreeable. Nor can the case be other- 

* 

wise. For the foundation of good breeding is good 
nature and good sense, two of the most useful and 
indispensable attributes of a well-constituted mind. 
Let it not be forgotten, however, that good breed¬ 
ing is not to be regarded as identical with polite¬ 
ness ; a mistake which is too frequently, if not gen- 


POLITENESS. 


5 x 3 


erally, committed. A person may be exceedingly 
polite without the much higher and more valuable 
accomplishment of good-breeding. 

He who possesses, naturally or as an acquirement, 
this warm-hearted kindness of disposition is by it 
rendered dear to all with whom he has to do His 
courtesy is repaid by courtesy; his consideration for 
others breeds consideration for him, his pleasant 
words are received by pleasant words, his cheerful 
smile mirrors itself in the laughing eyes of his 
neighbor; his whole life moves along with ten-fold 

V 

less friction than that of the unsympathetic, or the 
discourteous man. 

The essence of politeness is contained in the 

golden rule which bids us do unto others as we 
would that they should do unto us. Whatever treat¬ 
ment we can conceive of as likely to be unpleasant 
to us if we were the objects of it, let us avoid in 
all our intercourse with others. If we should not 

like to be maliciously slandered, let us not slander 

others, for their good name is as dear to them as 
ours is to us. If we should not like to be dis¬ 

honestly dealt with, then let us not be dishonest 
toward others. If we find it disagreeable to be with 
persons who are continually complaining about this, 
that, or the other ache, pain, or inconvenience, by 
all means let us refrain from inflicting others with 
our woes. If we are not entertained by a recital 
of our companion’s domestic affairs, let us remember 

that our history is not a whit less a bore to him. 

33 


514 POLITENESS. 

If we do not enjoy an encounter with a boor, let 
us not be boorish with others. If, when traveling, 
we find it disagreeable to be compelled to stand, 
while someone else occupies a seat for himself and 
a seat for his luggage, let us not be guilty of a like 
selfish impropriety. 

Moreover, the little marks of formal politeness 
prescribed by the usage of good society, ought not 
to be neglected. They are insignificant in them¬ 
selves, but as tokens of respect, and evidences of 
good breeding, they are invaluable. 

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momen¬ 
tary display of those qualities which our fellow-creat¬ 
ures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, 
what we strive to appear, manners may often be 
rendered useful guides to the performance of our 
duties. It is stated that when Bismarck was young, 
he had a habit of speaking somewhat lightly of the 
king, calling him “Fritz.” His father reprimanded 
him for this, and counseled him always to speak of 
his king with the utmost reverence, as in this way 
he would grow into a real feeling of reverence. This 
advice, it is said, he follows to this day. It is so 
with all of us in our intercourse with other people. 
If we accustom ourselves to speak politely, respect¬ 
fully, and kindly to every one, we shall, after a while, 
find that we have unconsciously imbibed a sentiment 
of genuine respect and kindliness for our fellow-men 
which will be of boundless advantage to us in many 
ways. 


Truthfulness. 


HE Athenians had a very high regard for 
truth. When Euripides, one of their 
favorite poets, presented his drama, “ Hip- 
polytus,” to the public, he met a storm of 
opposition, on account of a well-known line 
in the piece: 

“My tongue took an oath, but my mind is unsworn.” 

\ . 

This attack upon the sacredness of oaths 
was so distasteful to them, that Socrates, though he 
was an intimate friend of Euripides, left the assembly 
in indignation, and the dramatist was publicly accused 
and tried for impiety. 

Truthfulness is a requirement in all religions. A 
Spanish proverb calls truth God’s daughter. “ Of all 
duties,” says Silvio Pellico, “the love of truth, with 
faith and constancy in it, ranks first and highest. 
Truth is God. To love God and to love truth are 
one and the same.” “Nothing is beautiful but truth, 
and truth alone is lovely,” says Boileau. There is 
planted in us an admiration of truth and of the person 
who tells it, and a corresponding dislike of lies and 
liars. Truth seems to be manly and brave, while a 
lie is a cowardly sneak. 



515 


























TRUTHFULNESS. 


516 

But though the general duty to follow the truth 
is thus agreed upon by everybody, there is no subject 
more discussed in its applications. One branch of 
this discussion is upon the question : Is it ever right 
to tell an untruth? 

®ay We Iver Falsify ? 

An opinion which is quite common is that in cases 
where much good (unselfish good) can be accom¬ 
plished by the falsehood, or much evil avoided by it, 
we may rightly make use of it. Thus, we may deceive 
a lunatic for the purpose of getting him to the asylum, 
or a criminal in order to prevent him from committing 
a crime, or to gain evidence against him after the 
crime is already committed; or we may falsify to a 
rash, headstrong person, to keep him from running 
into danger; or diplomats and soldiers may deceive 
for the good of the country they serve. 

Rousseau has discussed the question at some 
length in his book, “ Reveries du Promeneur Soli¬ 
taire.” Says he: “ General and abstract truth is the 
most precious of all our goods^ Without it man is 
blind; it is the eye of reason. By it man learns 
how to conduct himself, to be what he ought to be, 
to do what he ought to do, to tend toward his true 
end. Particular and individual truth is not always 
a good, it is sometimes an evil, very often an indif¬ 
ferent thing. The things which it is important to 
a man that he should know, and the knowledge of 

o 


MAY WE EVER FALSIFY. 517 

which is necessary to his well-being, are not very 
numerous, but in whatever number they may be, 
they are a good which belongs to him, which he 
has a right to reclaim wherever he finds them, and 
of which one cannot deprive him without committing 
the most iniquitous of all robberies, because it is one 
of those goods common to all, the communication 
of which is no deprivation to him who gives it”; 
and: “To attribute falsely, to one’s self or another, 
an act which can result in praise or blame, is to 
do an unjust thing; now, everything that, contrary to 
truth, wounds justice in any manner whatever, is a 
lie. There is the exact limit; but anything that, con¬ 
trary to truth, does not interest justice in any way, 
is only fiction, and I confess that whoever reproaches 
himself with a pure fiction as a lie, has a conscience 
more delicate than mine.” The conclusion he finally 
reaches is that it is indifferent whether we tell truth 
or untruth in matters of no consequence, as the 
story part of a novel, for instance, but that in all 
things of any importance whatever, the absolute 
truth must be told, regardless of the effect it may 
have. The moral of a novel must always be strictly 
pure and true. 

Ruskin’s ideas on the subject are more rigid. 
Here is what he says about it: “There are some 
faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight 
in the estimate of wisdom; but truth forgives no 
insult, and endures no stain. We do not enough 
consider this; nor enough dread the slight and con- 


5i8 


TRUTHFULNESS. 


tinual occasions of offense against her. We are 
too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in 
its darkest associations, and through the color of its 
worst purposes. That indignation which we profess 
to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit 
malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treach¬ 
ery, because they harm us, not because they are 

untrue. Take the detraction and the mischief from 
the untruth, and we are little offended by it; turn 
it into praise, and we may be pleased with it. And 
yet it is not calumny nor treachery that does the 

largest sum of mischief in the world; they are con¬ 
tinually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. 
But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie, the 
amiable fallacy, the patriotic lie of the historian, 
the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie 
of the partisan, the merciful lie of the friend, and 
the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast 

a black mystery over humanity. We thank any 
man who pierces this dark cloud as we would thank 
one who dug a well in a desert; happy that the 

thirst for truth still remains with us, even when we 
have wilfully left the fountains of it. It would be 
well if moralists less frequently confused the great¬ 
ness of a sin with its unpardonableness. The two 
characters are altogether distinct. The greatness of 
a fault depends partly on the nature of the person 
against whom it is committed, partly upon the extent 
of its consequences. Its pardonableness depends, 
humanly speaking, on the degree of temptation to 


MAY WE EVER FALSIFY. 5 19 

it. One class of circumstances determines the weight 
of die attaching punishment; the other, the claim 
to remission of punishment: and since it is not 
always easy for men to estimate the relative weight, 
nor always possible for them to know the relative 
consequences, of crime, it is usually wise for them 
to quit the care of such nice distinctions, and to 
look to the other and clearer condition of right or 
wrong. We should esteem those faults worst which 
are committed under least temptation. I do not 
mean to diminish the blame of the injurious and 
malicious sin of the selfish and deliberate falsity; 
yet it seems to me that the shortest way to check 
the darker forms of deceit is to set a watch more 
scrupulous against those which have mingled, unre¬ 
garded and unchastised, with the current of our life. 
Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity 
as harmless, and another as slight, and another as 
unintended. Cast them all aside; they may be light 
and accidental; but they are an ugly soot from the 
smoke of the pit, for all that; and it is better that 
our hearts should be swept clean of them, without 
overcare as to which is largest or blackest. Speaking 
truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice; 
it is less a matter of will than of habit, and I doubt 
if any occasion can be trivial which permits the prac¬ 
tice and formation of such a habit.” 

But whatever opinion may be entertained of this 
(and it is a question which every one ought to settle 
for himself, and then act upon his conclusion), I think 


/ 


520 


I 


TRUTHFULNESS. 


it will be granted by most readers that the truth need 
not always be told. We are obliged by the principles 
of right to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth ; 
but certainly there are many times when we should 
not tell the whole truth. There are cases where we 
have the right to be silent. “ Falsehood and delusion 
are allowed in no case whatever, but, as in the exercise 
of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It 
is a sort of temperance by which a man speaks truth 
with measure, that he may speak it the longer.” 



It is not always necessary to feed one’s companions 
on unpalatable truths. Nothing is more silly than the 
pleasure some people take in “speaking their minds.” 
A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere 
pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full 
as innocent, might have preserved his friend or made 
his fortune. The rule is plain and simple. If we 
cannot speak well of an acquaintance or friend, let us 
keep silent. If we cannot say something calculated 
to cheer, gladden, and delight, let us at least not 

pursue a contrary course. Our duty is to afford as 

much pleasure, and to produce as much good, as we 
can in the world; and if our means, with reference 

to these subjects, be limited, we should at least 

endeavor to restrain the evil propensities of our 
nature, to curb and control the demons of scandal. 


EVIL SPEAKING. 


521 


jealousy, ill-will, and all uncharitableness. We all have 
infirmities and failings enough. We all require the 
exercise of generosity and forbearance. Our imper¬ 
fections, though invisible to ourselves, may be quite 
glaring to others. When, therefore, we indulge a 
spirit of generous and charitable forbearance in rela¬ 
tion to the errors of the rest of the world, we, in 
some degree, at least, entitle ourselves to a similar 
judgment with reference to our own. Nothing is 
ever lost by kindness and charity. No heart is 
pained, no sensibility is wounded, by words of court¬ 
esy, benevolence, and good breeding; while a rash 
word, a violent expression, a hasty or an unhappy 
remark, may inflict a keen pang, may cause a wound 
that will fester and rankle for years. 

The self-constituted censor of his neighbor’s doings 
is a universal plague. He is ubiquitous, living in 
every neighborhood. He is comparatively a harmless 
creature, though he does do damage, but he is a very 
disagreeable one. He wrongs others to some extent, 
but he wrongs himself more; for he is be-littleing 
himself instead of making his nature larger, stronger, 
and finer. He is training himself badly, for fault¬ 
finding is a very “school for slander.” 

Because our neighbor has committed some foolish 
act which would render him ridiculous in the eyes of 
all who might know of it, or because he has been 
guilty of some piccadillo or other, is no reason why 
we should go about telling it, even though we do 
not in the slightest degree pass the boundaries of 


5 22 


TRUTHFULNESS. 


truth in our version of the affair. We have no right 
to injure anybody’s good name without cause. His 
good name is his most precious possession, worth more 
to him than all the wealth of the western mines could 
be. The thought that we ourselves are not free from 
sinful and ridiculous traits of character, ought to 
make us very tolerant of others, and charitable in 
dealing with their faults. 

There is, however, one case in which we ought 
to be as bold and decided in telling the evil that we 
know of a man, as we ought generally to be con¬ 
siderate in keeping it to ourselves ; that is when he 
is trying to impose upon the world or upon any indi¬ 
vidual. If we knew that a man were seeking an 
opportunity to injure or defraud another, it would be 
our duty without doubt or hesitation to expose his 
plans and put the party in danger upon his guard. 
Again, if a man whom we knew to be habitually dis¬ 
honest, or otherwise unworthy of trust, were seeking 
an office, in the integrity of whose occupant the public 
is obliged to confide, unquestionably we should be 
guilty of neglect of duty if we did not communicate 
to the public the facts in our possession. Truth is 
violated by falsehood, and it may be equally outraged 
by silence. “He who conceals a useful truth,” says 
Augustine, “ is equally guilty with the propagator of 
an injurious falsehood.” 

Further than this we need never go. There are 
few things which cause more trouble in the world 
than the gossip and slander of meddlesome people. 


EVIL SPEAKING. 


5 2 3 


No community is free from these nuisances. They 
are the foulest harpies that ever gorged themselves 
at a stolen banquet. They pollute everything they 
touch. No character is too pure for them to fasten 
their filthy claws in. No reputation is so spotless 
that they may not slime it over with their lying words. 
Their noses are keener than any crow’s. Their faces 
are flabby and flaccid, and greasy from long feed¬ 
ing at unholy swinish feasts. Their eyes have a wry 
twist from peeping slyly around corners and through 
cracks to see what goes on behind private walls. 
They are more shameless than Peeping Tom, of 
Coventry. Would that their eyes, like his, might be 
shriveled into darkness in their heads. It would be 
but meager punishment for the evil they have done, 
the reputations they have blasted, the families they 
have broken up, the tears they have caused. 

There is a proverb which says that “ it takes two 
to make a bargain.” So we may say, it takes two 
to make a slander. No person can retail slanders 
unless some one else will listen to him. The one 
who listens is little less guilty than the one who tells. 

“Slander meets no regard from noble minds; 

Only the base believe what the base only utter,” 

says somebody. Plautus declares that if he could 
have the decision of the matter, the men who carry 
about and those who listen to accusations should all 
be hanged, the carriers by their tongues and the 
listeners by their ears. 


524 


FLATTERY. 


MATTERY. 

How debasing a habit flattery is, has been spoken 
of before. No man of independence and spirit will 
ever suffer himself to become a flatterer, the thing is 
too base, too ignoble for him to stoop to it. “ It is 
the most abject thing in nature ; nay, I cannot think 
of any character below the flatterer, except he that 
envies him.” But flattery would be comparatively a 
venial offense if it harmed no one else than him who 
uses it. It is also a most deadly thrust at the mental 
integrity of him who is the object of it. It leaves a 
very dangerous impression. It swells a man’s imagi¬ 
nation, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a 
doting upon his own person. One of the character¬ 
istics of David Garrick, the great actor, was thus men¬ 
tioned by Goldsmith in his “Retaliation”: 

“ Of praise a mere glutton, he swallowed what came; 

And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame; 

Till his relish grown callous almost to disease, 

Who peppered the highest was surest to please.” 


Exaggeration. 

One of the commonest tendencies of persons who 
do not sufficiently reverence the truth, is that toward 
exaggeration, or in other words, “stretching the story.” 
Is not truth the sublimest thing in the world? What 
need is there that we should deck it in the tinsel of 


TRUTHFULNESS. 


525 


e x agge ra ti° n , and thereby destroy its vitality. The 
superlative degree does not add power to a state¬ 
ment when habitually used; it is only an element 
of weakness. The simple truth in speech stands 
out in plain grandeur, like the Doric column in 
architecture. The superlative degree in language 
should be reserved to express the superlative degree 
in things. . Instead of which, it is generally used 
upon insignificant things, in a vain attempt to bring 
them up to a sort of general level of importance. 
How foolish! Are not the Alps finer than the dead 
level of the Sahara? A mountain needs a valley 
to set it off. Mount Everest, set into the midst 
of a plateau two thousand nine hundred feet high, 
would seem but a very small hill. So the grandest 
truth of the universe, surrounded by high-sounding 
but empty phrases, loses its force, and seems but 
a folly among follies. Let those things that are 
trivial remain trivial, that those which are great may 
not be dwarfed of their greatness. 

He who habitually exaggerates, loses all credit for 
truthfulness, and people learn to listen to what he 
says with a grain of allowance, to divide it, as it were, 
by two, or five, or ten. So that whenever he does 
have something of real importance to tell, no one will 
believe him, and he is thus the loser by his desire to 
be sensational. 

It is not always easy to tell the exact truth. To 
hear accurately and then to tell just what you have 
heard, no more and no less, is a task requiring a 


526 


EXAGGERATION. 


degree of attention and intelligence possessed by 
comparatively few. To illustrate to his school the 
necessity of absolute precision in the statement of 
words, and the difficulty of acquiring it, a gentleman 
selected from the high school six of the most capable 
boys, whose average age was, perhaps, seventeen 
years. He explained the experiment he was about 
to make, and desired them to give it their close atten¬ 
tion, in order, if possible, to repeat the words he was 
about to give them. The plan was to show number 
one a short sentence written on a piece of paper, 
which he was requested to memorize and whisper to 
number two, who, in turn, was to communicate it to 
number three, and so on, till the last of the six should 
receive it, and write it upon the blackboard. The 
boys were anxious to prove that they could tell a 
straight story when they applied their minds to it, 
especially, since a failure on this trial would show 
them to be inaccurate, and consequently unreliable in 
all ordinary statements, where no unusual efforts were 
made to report correctly. The following sentence 
was prepared for the trial: “ Maternal affection is. 
an instinct which most animals possess in common 
with man.” After each boy had communicated the 
sentence to his neighbor, the last one wrote the 
following as his version: “ Maternal affection is an 
instinct which all animals possess except man.” A 

N i 

comparison of these two sentences proves that it is a 
difficult feat of memory to repeat, even under favorable 
circumstances, any words uttered by another. Since 


TRUTHFULNESS. 


5 2 7 


these boys, selected for their smartness, accustomed 
to give attention as pupils, anxious to show their 

ability to hear exactly, and repeat accurately, failed 

\ 

to make a true report of eleven words, how much 
more liable must ordinary persons be, under circum¬ 
stances less favorable, to report incorrectly the precise 
words in a given conversation. A change of two or 
three words in the above experimental sentence, makes 
the last boy state the very reverse of the sentiment 
expressed by the first one. How absurd it is to 
suppose that persons generally can reproduce the 
exact language of others, and how exceedingly cautious 
we should be in giving, or in receiving, statements 
claiming to be so accurate. 

But hard as it is to speak and act always the exact 
truth, it is well worth the trouble to do so. Truth 
is one of the brightest and purest of the moral jewels 
of our nature. It not only illustrates, but it adorns 
and dignifies. It is, indeed, invaluable in almost every 
respect in which it may be considered. The true man, 
one whose word may always be relied upon, is deserv¬ 
edly esteemed and respected by all who know him; 
and the weight of his opinion cannot but exercise 
a high moral influence in every intelligent circle. It 
has been well and wisely contended that “ truth lies 
at the very foundation of the really virtuous char- , 
acter.” It is the keystone of the arch. It inspires 
confidence; and in its absence, every other element 
of purity is deprived of a portion of its beauty and 
strength. No truly great or good man ever lived 


EXAGGERATION. 


5 2 ^ 

in whom this trait was not prominent. Truth is the 
brightest jewel in the young man’s crown. He that 
is unwilling to prevaricate, to misrepresent, to garble, 
to pervert; he that scorns to deceive, and with a 
modest frankness and a manly firmness always speaks 
the simple truth, commends himself at once to the 
respect and admiration of the truly wise and virtu¬ 
ous. An individual may be a perfect novice in busi¬ 
ness, may not possess brilliant talents, may be awkward 
in person and unpolished in manners; but let it be 
known that he is a truthful man, that there is no 
deception, no falsehood, about him, that he comes 
directly to the mark in all he says, and that his word 
is never to be doubted, and he will have a sure pass¬ 
port to the confidence of the community; and he who 
can command confidence, can also command success. 
On the other hand, let an individual be attractive in 
person, accomplished in manners, marked by energy, 
enterprise, talent, and tact, but let him at the same 
time be addicted to falsehood, and the effect will be 
to create distrust, excite suspicion, to destroy hope, 
and to impair prospects. 

The following anecdote illustrates the value of a 
reputation for truthfulness, and the confidence reposed 
in one who has such a reputation. Just as the civil 
war commenced, soldiers were enlisting and going 
away from almost every home in the land. A young 
man had volunteered, and was expecting daily to be 
ordered to the seat of war. One day his mother 
gave him an unpaid bill, with the money, and asked 


TRUTHFULNESS. 


5 2 9 


/ 


him to pay it. When he returned home at night, 
she said: “ Did you pay that bill?” “Yes,” he 
answered. In a few days the bill was sent in a 
second time. “ I thought,” she said to her son, “ that 
you paid this.” “ I really don’t remember, mother, 
you know I’ve had so many things on my mind.” 
“But you said you did.” “Well,” he answered, “if 
I said I did, I did.” He went away, and his mother 
took the bill herself to the store. The young man 
had been known in the town all his life, and what 
opinion was held of him the result will show. “ I 
am quite sure,” she said, “that my son paid this some 
days ago; he has been very busy since, and has quite 
forgotten about it, but he told me that he had that 
day, and says, if he said then that he had, he is quite 
sure that he did.” “Well,” said the man, “I forget 
about it, but if he ever said he did, he did.” How 
much such a reputation would be worth to a man 
in business, may perhaps be imagined. 

“Truth informs the judgment, rectifies the mind, 

Pleases the understanding, makes the will 
Submit, the mem’ry, too, it doth fill 
With what doth our imaginations please ; 

Likewise it tends our troubles to appease.” 




Charity. 


MAN needs to have his soul warmed by 
contact with helpless beings. If he met 
nothing weaker than himself, his sympathies 
would wither away, “ the milk of human 
kindness” in him would all dry up, and he 
would indeed be spiritually, a poor starve¬ 
ling creature. To give aid of any kind to anybody 
who needs it, is an act which strengthens one, and 
fills him with a peculiarly joyous feeling. Truly, “it 
is more blessed to give than to receive.” There is 
scarcely anything else that can produce such unmixed 
happiness as the doing of good to a fellow man in 
distress. Every act of that kind seems to leave a 
residuum of goodness and kindness in our hearts; and 
accordingly in all religions generosity has been one 
of the prominent sentiments. The most beautiful 
trait in the character of the Mohammedan Arabians is 
their almost boundless generosity. Their history is full 
of examples of it, which it would be hard to match in 
the history of any other race of people. The ancient 
Jews had a saying that a man could purchase Paradise 
with a cup of cold water, so highly did they value 
charity and hospitality. 

“Charity is a universal duty,” says Dr. Johnson, 

530 












WHEN AND HOW TO GIVE. 


531 


“which it is in every man’s power to practice; since 
every degree of assistance given to another, upon 
proper motives, is an act of charity; and there is 
scarcely any man in such a state of imbecility as that 
he may not, on some occasions, benefit his neighbor. 
He that cannot relieve the poor may instruct the 
ignorant; and lie that cannot attend the sick may 
reclaim the vicious. He that can give little assistance 
himself may yet perform the duty of charity by influ¬ 
encing the ardor of others, and recommending the 
petitions which he cannot grant to those who have 
more to bestow. The widow that shall give her 
mite to the treasury, the poor man who shall bring 
to the thirsty a cup of cold water, shall not lose 
their reward.” “A poor man,” say the Orientals, 
“with a single handful of flowers, heaped the alms- 
bowl of Buddha, which the rich could not fill with 
ten thousand bushels.” 


When and How to Hive. 

But necessary and lovely as generous charity is, 
there are times when it is out of place. There is a 
proverb which says that “ Charity should begin at 
home”; and the maxim, though it has been fre¬ 
quently abused, is a true one. Our families and our 
creditors have the first claim upon us. We should 
never get too good to be just. When our debts are 
all paid, and those dependent upon us are all prop¬ 
erly cared for, is the time for outside charity to begin, 


532 


CHARITY. 


or, at least, it ought not to be carried to any consid¬ 
erable extent before that time. 

The neglect of this principle was one of the great 
defects of Oliver Goldsmith’s character. The money 
given him by his friends to enable him to obtain a 
professional education was given away to others, and 
wasted in riotous living. For a number of years he 
lived a vagabond life, either wandering about over 
Europe in the guise of a strolling musician, or living 
by hook or crook in London. And after his repu¬ 
tation had been firmly established by “The Traveller,’' 
“The Deserted Village,” and other pieces, and he was 
able to obtain large prices for whatever he might write, 
so great was his extravagance and his generosity that 
he was always in financial distress, living in discomfort, 
and dying ten thousand dollars in debt. With great 
abilities and troops of friends, he might, by only a 
moderate exercise of judgment, have lived in comfort 
and happiness, and been respected as well as loved. 
As it was, he was rendered miserable by his very 
excess of amiability. 

There is another way in which we should limit 
our charity, and that is by the character of the one 
who asks for aid. Begging has always been a favorite 
resort for the lazy and improvident. It is a regular 
trade and is said to be not an unprofitable one. It 
is hard of course to say “ No” to a person, especially 
a child or a woman, who puts on a pitiful face and 
begs to be relieved from starvation, or extreme 
suffering. But to encourage degraded idleness and 


WHEN AND HOW TO GIVE. 


533 


extravagance is certainly wrong, and in very many 
cases that is the only effect which a gift to these 
people will have. So far as is possible, a person 
ought to investigate the petitions for relief which 
come to him, and then give or withhold his aid, 
according to the worthiness or unworthiness of the 
petitioner. This process involves expenditure of time 
and trouble, but its performance (when it does not 
conflict with some higher duties) is a duty which we 
owe to the world, to the person asking assistance, 
and to ourselves. We owe it to the world, because 
the welfare of society demands that all its members 
shall be engaged in some useful work. We owe 
it to the person, because otherwise we might be in 
danger of refusing aid to some one worthy of it. 
We owe it to ourselves as a matter of protection 
against impostors. 

The numerous benevolent associations and other 
modern means of systematically alleviating the con¬ 
dition of the poor, are deserving of all praise and 
support. Having large amounts of money at their 
disposal, and making charity a business to be con¬ 
ducted upon business principles, they are able to 
cover the field of want much more thoroughly than • 
could possibly be done by unorganized individual 
effort alone. They reach a great many cases that 
private benevolence could not. Notwithstanding all 
this, it is desirable that every man should be to a 
great extent his own bestower of alms. Half the 
blessedness of giving is lost, if we give indirectly. 


534 


CHARITY. 


We need t-o come into close contact with the squalid 
wretchedness of the poor. It is only thus that we 
can get the full personal benefit from our alms-giving. 
Our souls are made richer by knowing for ourselves 
the misery which exists, and having our sympathies 
excited by it, and by the gentle glow of feeling which 
follows every good action. It does not help us nearly 
so much to give to associations for the remote dis¬ 
tribution of aid. 

Alms should be given cheerfully and pleasantly, 
as if the whole heart went with them, and not grudg¬ 
ingly, with an air that seems to say they are given 
only for the purpose of getting rid of a disagreeable 
person. The pleasant word that shows a genuine 
good-will, often helps the poor heart more than any 
material assistance could do, while an abundant gift, 
gruffly given, carries with it a poison which counter¬ 
balances any good it might otherwise do. Let us 
never be harsh or unkind toward those people who 
may be unfortunate enough to need help from us; 
a pleasant word costs nothing, and it never fails to 
do good. 

“ When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know 
what thy right hand doeth,” was one of the injunctions 
of that never to be equaled “Sermon on the Mount.” 
Too large a portion of our charity is done to be seen 
of man. The poor that surround us are neglected; 
perhaps our neighbor’s children go with bare feet 
because he is unable to buy shoes for them; per¬ 
haps the family of the man who does odd chores 


WHEN AND HOW TO GIVE. 


535 


for us have never known the pleasure of eating - a 
good meal in a warm, pleasant room; there may be 
in our immediate neighborhood some one sick and 
unable to procure the services of a physician, for 
lack of money. We may know of all this, and yet 
pass it carelessly and heartlessly by. To relieve these 
necessities would probably bring us no honor before 
the world. Probably no one would ever hear of our 
act. But when the solicitor calls with his paper, ask¬ 
ing money for some fanciful cause, we give freely. 
Why? People will see our name upon the paper, 
and praise us for our generosity. But that act bears 
no relation to charity; it is merely an outgrowth of 
our desire for praise, and the bookkeeper above will 
give us no credit for it. Give for the benefit of the 
needy, not the newspapers and the gossips. Some¬ 
body has said that the common practice of keeping 
all we have through life, and at death leaving the 
bulk of it to found some institution which shall bear 
the name of the giver, is the worst form of selfish¬ 
ness. If not exactly the worst form of selfishness, 
it certainly is not the highest form of generous charity. 

In order to derive the fullest and purest pleasure, 
as well as the most spiritual benefit, from our charity, 
we should give freely, cheerfully, unostentatiously, and 
in such ways, times, and places as we think will lead 
to the most real good. And, then, how intense and 
how pure is the joy we may get from it, only he 
knows whose name is blessed in the humble abodes 
of the needy poor about him. 


536 


CHARITY. 


fORGIVENESS AND 'fOLERANCE. 

Charity shows itself not only in a spirit of help¬ 
fulness to those who are poor in this world’s goods, 
but also in a readiness to forgive injuries which we 
may have received from others, and in a disposition 
to be tolerant of those whose opinions differ from 
our own, and to be gentle and lenient in our dealings 
with offenders of all kinds. This broadness of view, 
this thorough understanding of our own nature and 
its weak parts, will doubtless arouse the same senti¬ 
ments in others. Human nature is about the same 
everywhere, and in times of trial and temptation it 
is exceedingly apt to give way. Sinlessness is proof 
of virtue only when it has been maintained in the 
midst of temptation. Oh, you who have always been 
cradled in the lap of luxury, who have lived sur¬ 
rounded by all the influences that refine and ennoble, 
who have never known the insidious wiles of the 
tempter when he comes hid in the cloak of duty to 
loved ones, point not the finger of scorn at your 
more hardly-entreated brother. Shun not his presence. 
Throw round him your pitying arm ; relieve his neces¬ 
sity, remove his temptation, and strive to strengthen 
him against its recurrence. Remember that in his 
place you might have been as weak as he. 

Lack of charity for the opinions of others has been 
one of the world’s greatest curses. It is the ugliest 
blot in the history of humanity. Only two or three 


FORGIVENESS AND TOLERANCE. 537 

centuries ago, the soil of England and France was 
reddened with the blood of religious offenders. “ The 
Reformation ” was accomplished only after a long 
series of bitter persecutions and civil wars. 

After a terrible politico-religious war had been 
waged for eight years in France, between the Hugue¬ 
nots and the Catholics, there was a short peace of 
two years, and then on St. Bartholomew’s day, 1572, 
the Catholics of France rose against their Protestant 
brothers and in one day there fell, victims to religious 
hatred, of Huguenots, to a number which is variously 
estimated at from thirty thousand to seventy thou¬ 
sand. And this dreadful massacre was applauded by 
the Pope of the time, who proclaimed a year of jubilee 
to celebrate this so-called victory of the church. 

The change of religion in England brought about 
almost as much misery as in France. During the 
reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary and Eliza¬ 
beth, England was the scene of constant religious 
persecution, now of the Catholics and now of the 
Protestants, the severest punishments being inflicted 
upon those who dissented from the established religion. 
Nor did the trouble end when the supremacy of prot- 
estantism was finally established. The hatred and 
warfare between different sects of the new religion 
was as bitter as it had formerly been between Cath¬ 
olics and Protestants, until finally the people grew tired 
of the sickening outrages, and a much more tolerant 
feeline arose in the world. 

O 

But even now, though bodily toleration is granted 


538 


CHARITY. 


to persons whose doctrines are unpopular, mental and 
social toleration is not. If a man avows his adherence 
to opinions very radically differing from those of his 
neighbors, he is almost sure to be banished from 
their homes. Our minds are not yet capacious enough 
to accommodate the whole of a question. We can 
look only upon one side of it. We are lawyers who 
investigate a subject only with a view of finding argu¬ 
ments to confirm an opinion already asserted, not 
judges whose purpose is to arrive at the exact truth. 
This is surely a defect in our mental habits, and 
one which we should sedulously strive to remedy. 
There is room enough inside the pales of truth for 
a great many opinions which appear contradictory. 
All truth cannot be penned up in one formula or 
one set of ideas. It is a weakness, then, for us to 
insist upon the absolute and complete truth of some 
favorite dogma and to quarrel with all other opinions. 
The strongest man would perceive and gladly recog¬ 
nize whatever of truth any doctrine might contain, 
and look upon the rest with toleration, as being merely 
absence of truth — just as darkness is only absence 
of light and not any active principle in itself. And 
if he saw himself forced to combat any idea, he would 
confine his warfare to the doctrine, not extending it to 
the person who happened to believe it. 

Why should two men be personally hostile merely 
because they hold conflicting opinions upon certain 
subjects ? There is little more sense in quarreling 
with a man because his opinions contradict our own, 



FORGIVENESS AND TOLERANCE. 539 

than in fighting him because his nose is pug while 
our own is hooked, or because he is hunch-backed, 
while we are only club-footed. A man’s Republican¬ 
ism, or Democracy, or Methodism, or Catholicism, 
or whatever ism he may adhere to, is as much a 
part of his individuality as his nose and his hair, 
and should be as much respected, and as little a 
cause of personal controversy with him. Let us, 
then, live together in peace and harmony, and look 
upon doctrines as things to be studied and thought 
about, but not to be quarreled over. 

Who has not committed error? Who has not 
strayed away from high principle, unwavering recti¬ 
tude, and the lofty standard of perfection ? And yet 
who would not revolt at the idea of having the door 
of forgiveness closed against him — of being doomed 
to suffer, no matter how deep his contrition, or how 
severe his penalty or regret, remorse and punish¬ 
ment ? A penitent should ever be welcomed again 
to the fold of virtue. If, in the first place, he found 
himself unable to resist the temptations of his posi¬ 
tion in the world, if despite his convictions to the 
contrary, he nevertheless went astray and kept astray 
for years, the effort by which he at last recovered 
himself, and asserted his supremacy of the moral and 
rio-ht over the immoral and wrong, must have been 
a vigorous and a noble one. He deserves credit 

o 

therefor; and, if sincere, should not only be taken 
by the hand freely and willingly, but the darkness 
of his past character should be blotted forever from 


540 CHARITY. 

the memory. We should forget, if possible, and 
assuredly we should forgive. 

“ In taking revenge,” said Lord Bacon in his 

inimitable way; “ a man is but even with his enemy; 

but in passing it over, he is superior, for it is a 

prince’s part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, 

saith, ‘ It is the glory of a man to pass by an 
offense.’ That which is past, is gone, and irrevoca¬ 
ble ; and wise men have enough to do, with things 
present and to come; therefore, they do but trifle 
with themselves, that labor in past matters. There 
is no man doth a wrong for the wrong’s sake; but 
thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or 
honor, or the like. Therefore, why should I be 
angry with a man for loving himself better than me ? 
And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill 
nature, why? Yet it is but like the thorn, or briar, 
which prick, and scratch, because they can do no 
other.” 

Charity commands that we should not take revenge 
for any wrongs done us, but should forgive all injuries 
in a spirit of love and gentleness. Pride commands 
the same thing, for to avenge an injury is to put 
ourselves on a level with the offender, while to for¬ 
give it is to raise ourselves above it and the doer 
of it. An enlightened self-interest will also move 
to the same result; for, as Lord Bacon says in the 
essay quoted above, “A man that studieth revenge 
keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would 
heal and do well. Vindictive persons live the life 


FORGIVENESS AND TOLERANCE. 541 

of witches; who, as they are mischievous, so end 
they unfortunately.” Anger and hatred are always 
and inevitably uncomfortable feelings, and we had 
best be rid of them as soon as possible. But nursing 
them only makes them so much the stronger, and 
in consequence so much the more painful. Besides, 
there is a great positive pleasure in calmly forgiving 
an injury. “Nothing is more moving to man,” says 
Jean Paul, “than the spectacle of reconciliation. Our 
weaknesses are thus indemnified, are not too costly, 
being the price we pay for the hour of forgiveness, 
and the archangel who has never felt anger, has 
reason to envy the man who subdues it. When 
thou forgivest, the man who has pierced thy heart 
stands to thee in the relation of the seaworm that 
perforates the shell of the mussel, which straightway 
closes the wound with a pearl.” 

When Louis, Duke of Orleans, came upon the 
throne of France with the title of Louis XII., he com¬ 
menced his reign by forgiving all his enemies, though 
he had now the power to punish them, saying that 
“it did not become the King of France to resent 
the injuries of the Duke of Orleans.” The act was 
a noble one, and it won him the admiration of all 
classes of people. Says Laurence Sterne : “ The brave 
only know how to forgive ; it is the most refined and 
generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at. 
Cowards have done good and kind actions; cowards 
have even fought, nay, sometimes conquered; but a 
coward never forgave — it is not in his nature; the 



542 


CHARITY. 


power of doing it flows only from a strength and 
greatness of soul conscious of its own force and 
security; and, above all, the little temptations of 
resisting every fruitless attempt to interrupt its hap¬ 
piness.” 

The duty of Christian forgiveness does not require 
you, nor are you allowed to look on injustice, or any 
other faults, with indifference, as if it were nothing 
wrong at all, merely because it is you that have been 
wronged. But even where we cannot but censure, 
in a moral point of view, the conduct of those who 
have injured us, we should remember that such treat¬ 
ment as may be very fitting for them to receive may 
be very unfitting for us to give. An old Spanish 
writer, says: “ to return evil for good is devilish ; to 
return good for good is human; but to return good 
for evil is Godlike.” 



* 



lUTIES Ifl THE RELHTIOHSHIFS 

OF F{0ME. 



ERHAPS the most important and 
widest-reaching of all the duties 
which constantly bear upon us in 
this world, are those which arise 
from the nature and relationships 
of our homes. A combination of 


instincts and circumstances, some of which 
we hold in common with the lower animals, 
and some of which are higher, and quite 
peculiar to ourselves, make a home essen¬ 
tial to our well-being and happiness. 

It is the central spot of earth about 
which lodge three fourths of the pleasant 
or the sorrowful memories and hopes of life. The 
tendrils of the youthful heart wrap themselves around 
it so tightly that not the shock of years or the 
deadening strain of distance can pull them away. 
There is no other so charmed word in the English 
language as that little word, home. There is no other 

song that can thrill the soul with such power, and 

543 












544 


HOME RELATIONSHIPS. 


can so surely melt the stony heart to tears, as that 
sweet song of home which was written out of the 
life-blood of its author, when, wandering homeless 
and poor, in the streets of foreign cities, he gazed 
with an unspeakable yearning across the wild waste of 
waters, toward the sunny southern home of his child¬ 
hood. Home is where Mother lived, and Father, and 
Sister, and Brother. Home is where, “in the heart 
of June,” we lay for hours, looking up into the calm 
blue sky, and building our lofty plans for the future. 
Home was the scene of a thousand delightful occur¬ 
rences that never happen anywhere else, and never 
could happen anywhere else. Will Carleton used to 
say, in one of his lectures, that heaven and earth 
were united by a golden chain, and that every link 
of that golden chain was a home. 

In Goethe’s beautiful drama, “ Iphigenie auf Tau- 
ris,” the poet introduces the priestess Iphigenie thus 
soliloquizing in a forest of the foreign country which 
fate has compelled her to adopt as a home : 

“Among your gloomy shades, ye waving tops 
Of the old and holy, thick-embowered woods, 

As to the Goddess’ quiet sanctuary, 

E’en yet I come with trembling awe, 

As if I entered them the first time now : 

Nor grows my soul accustomed to this place, 

So many years a lofty will, to which 
I am resigned, hath kept me hidden here; 

Yet from the first a stranger have I been. 

For, ah ! beyond the sea are those I love, 

And on the shore I stand the long day through, 

My spirit looking for its Grecian home ; 


HOME RELATIONSHIPS. 


545 


And for my sighs the wave brings only back 
Its hollow tones that howl into my ear. 

Alas for him who from his kindred far 
Drags on his lonely life ! His nearest joy 
Grief sudden snatches from his lips away. 

His thoughts are ever roaming off toward 
His father’s halls, where first the sun spread out 
Before him heaven’s beauteous expanse, 

Where equal-aged playmates strong and stronger 
Bands of love bound round each other’s hearts.” 

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all 
ambition; the end to which every enterprise and 
labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the 
prosecution. 

“ There is a land, of every land the pride, 

Beloved by heaven o’er all the world beside ; 

Where brighter suns dispense serener light, 

, And milder moons emparadise the night; 

A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth, 

Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth. 

^ The wandering mariner, whose eye explores 

The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores, 

Views not a realm so bountiful and fair, 

Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air; 

In every clime the magnet of his soul, 

Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole; 

For in this land of heaven’s peculiar grace, 

The heritage of nature’s noblest race, 

There is a spot of earth supremely blest, 

A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest, 

Where man, creation’s tyrant, casts aside 
His sword and scepter pageantry and pride, 

While in his softened looks benignly blend 
The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend. 

Here woman reigns ; the mo’ther, daughter, wife, 

Strew with fresh flowers the narrow way of life! 

35 


546 


HOME RELATIONSHIPS. 


In the clear heaven of her delightful eye, 

An angel-guard of loves and graces lie; 

Around her knees domestic duties meet, 

And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet. 

Where shall that land, that spot of earth, be found? 

Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around; 

Oh, thou shalt find, howe’er thy footsteps roam, 

That land thy country, and that spot thy home.” 

The permanency of a home, and the closeness with 
which its members are bound together, make it 
extremely necessary, even from a selfish point of view, 
that all the duties connected with it be uniformly 
observed, and that nothing be neglected which can 
in anyway contribute to purify and sweeten domestic 
life. If those who must be so constantly and immedi¬ 
ately associated with one another for so long a term 
of years, do not make any effort to avoid the petty 
jealousies and quarrels that are likely to arise at any 
time; if they do not practice the many virtues that 
tend to lessen the sorrows of home life and increase 
its joys; home will become a foretaste of purgatory, 
rather than the blessed place of which we have 
spoken. We may sum up all the principal home 
duties in three words: honesty, kindness, and patience. 
Let these three words be sunk deep into the heart 
of every member of a home, and it will be the 
blessedest spot on earth, the place from which every 
one will be reluctant to part, and to which, when 
absent, he will long to return. 

There are different steps or stages in the develop¬ 
ment of homes, from the rosy Spring of life, when the 


HOME RELATIONSHIPS. 


547 


youth are laying - their first plans for the future, on 
past the Summer and harvest time, to the season of 
the Autumn and the sere and yellow leaf. Out of 
each stage grow peculiar forms of the duties already 
named. The following analysis gives a simple, yet 
very complete showing of the different periods in the 
history of a home, and the chief branches of duty in 
each. 


r Of Lover and 
Sweetheart. 


f Proper Choice of Persons. 
Love. 

Mutual Honesty. 


Of 


Husband 
and Wife. 


r Fidelity and Honesty. 
Patience. 

< Continued Affection. 
Sharing Cares and Joys. 
Mutual Kindness. 


f Education of Head and Heart. 


Duties in the 
Relationships < 
of Home. 


Of Parents 
and Children * 


Mutual Respect. 
Discipline. 


^ Mutual Love and Kindness. 


Of Brothers 
and Sisters. 


Forbearance and Kindness 
Love and Unity. 


f Respect and kindness of employers. 

Of Masters J obedience and Faithfulness, 
and Servants. 

i Honesty of Employes. 


w Of Teachers 
and Pupils. 


"The Teacher’s Work. 
Character Building. 

Discipline. 

Mutual Kindness and Respect. 











Hover ajid Iweetreart. 


OURTSHIP is the 

The winds seem to blow balmier then 
than at any other time; the skies wear 
a softer blue; the sunsets are more gor¬ 
geous and the moonlight is purer; the brook 
sings a sweeter song as it dances along 
over its pebbly bed; everything is hal¬ 
lowed by the presence of youth, buoyant spirits, 
and uncrushed hopes. Where is the graybeard who 
does not think the birds were gayer, and the flowers 
brighter fifty years ago than now ? When he was 
young the very trees sympathized with his love and 
sighed the name of his mistress ; they don’t do that 
now, they only howl when the wind whistles through 
them, and too often send a chill to his soul. But 
when he forgets the harshness of a stern, earnest life, 
which lies between his present and the days of his 
youth, his heart melts in sympathy with the joyous 
young hearts of to-day, and he becomes himself 
almost young again. 

Love is the most powerful branch of the Sensi¬ 
bilities (see page 254 and 272) in this, that no per¬ 
fect human being ever lived but was at some period 

of his life largely governed by this universal senti- 

548 


halcyon time of life. 
















Y0UMG iYBOM AMB MASS (OHAWOETH 




































































LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 549 

ment. It is safe to say that with the majority of 
people it may make or mar their lives. 

Much of the bitterness and recklessness of spirit 
which shows itself in Byron’s writings was due to 
the unhappy state of his affections. His first and 
purest love, that for Miss Chaworth, was doomed to 
disappointment. The lady’s uncle, who was also her 
guardian, on account of an old quarrel between the 
two families refused to allow the young Lord to pay 
his attentions to the maiden, and succeeded in turn¬ 
ing her heart away from him. He married another 
some years afterward, but the world is familiar with 
the story of their unhappiness and separation. It is 
true there were some other causes (notably one, 
a vicious tempered mother) for Byron’s sad career; 
but had he been more fortunate in his love attach¬ 
ments, his life might have borne more worthy fruits, 
and had a far different ending. 

Love has been the most fruitful subject and cause 
of poetry from the time of ancient Sappho, down 
to that greatest love poet of all, Tom Moore. It 
would take a large library to hold all the poems that 
lovers have written out of their passion. Our own 
age and country furnishes two or three remarkable 
examples of books that were written as offerings at 
the altar of love. 

It is said that we owe “Innocents Abroad” to 
circumstances such as these: Samuel L. Clemens 
(Mark Twain) went to Europe with an excursion 
party, and during the trip a mutual affection grew 


550 


LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 


up between him and an accomplished lady, daughter 
of a wealthy citizen of a town in New York. Clemens 
was fresh from the wild society of the Rocky Mount¬ 
ains and Mississippi River, and as might naturally be 
expected, was somewhat rough in action and speech. 
He had little means of support aside from his pen, 
and the father of the young lady judged him a not 
very desirable person to be introduced as a son into 
the family of a gentleman of wealth and culture; 
hence his suit was rejected. But he determined to 
make himself worthy of the lady of his love, and 
to show his worthiness. In pursuance of this two¬ 
fold idea, he corrected his habits, and wrote “Inno¬ 
cents Abroad,” a most spirited and witty account of 
his foreign tour. It only remains to be added that 
he was successful; he had some fame already as a 
writer, and this book made for him both an enduring 
name and some money; and he received from the old 
gentleman, not only his bride, but a beautiful home. 

Another case yet more romantic and beautiful, 
is that of Longfellow. In 1842 Miss Frances Appleton 
was traveling in Europe with her father. In the same 
year, Professor Longfellow was in Germany. He was 
then about thirty-five years old, professor of modern 
languages and belles-lettres in Harvard University. 
Mr. Longfellow became deeply enamored of Fannie 
Appleton. He was a man of fine personal appearance, 
with rare attainments in European culture, to which 
he had devoted several years of travel and study, and 
he had already a fame as a poet not confined to 


LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 551 

America. But still his suit did not thrive. If not 
absolutely rejected, he was not an accepted lover. 
Both returned to America. Mr. Longfellow published 
his romance of “ Hyperion,” in which he told the story 
his love — he being his own hero, under the name 
of Paul Flemming; the heroine, Mary Ashburton, 
representing Miss Appleton. One of the prettiest 
bits of wooing in our language is that where Paul 
Flemming makes known his love for Mary Ashburton. 
They are sitting on a bank in a meadow near an old 
German castle; the lady has her sketch-book and is 
making a drawing of the ruins ; she inquires if there 
is not some strange history or tradition connected 
with the locality, and he tells her he will furnish one 
for her. She laughingly says she will be pleased to 
listen to it. Paul proceeds to tell her a story of a 
lonely student who once occupied a room in this castle 
and delighted only in books, till he saw the beautiful 
Hermione, when his studies no longer satisfied his 
heart. Hermione refused to listen to him; and he 
begged fate to take away his memory that he might 
no longer think of her. But at the last he could not 
bear to part with his remembrances of Hermione; and, 
though she would not love him, he refused to take 
her image out of his heart. At this point Paul 
discovers to Mary that she is herself the Hermione 
of his story, and Paul is himself the devoted but 
unhappy student. 

Longfellow did not give up his unsuccessful suit, 
but followed Miss Appleton to her home in Pittsfield; 



55 2 


LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 


and no lady who has read either “ Hyperion” or 
“ Kavanagh,” his two books inspired by this courtship, 
will blame the heroine for at last yielding to so 
earnest a lover. 

Courtship is not only the most blissful, but, perhaps, 
also the most serious period of life. It is the first step 
toward the making of a home. Its effects must remain 
with us to the grave, attuning our lives to pleasure 
or pain. It is a step which is very hard to retrace, 
and which, even if retraced, will leave impressions 
which can never be rubbed out. It is of the utmost 
importance, then, that the step should be wisely taken, 
that the effects may be pleasant, and that there may 
be no footprints which we could desire to efface. 


fROPER CHOICE OF lERSONS. 

Aside from mental qualifications, there is one matter 
which must be considered before taking the marriage 
vow, and before entering upon that courtship period 
which is preliminary to marriage, and that is health. 
It is one of Nature’s laws that a parent’s health or 
disease is inherited by his children, and it may be very 
seriously questioned whether we have any right to 
bring into the world children who must be cursed with 
pain and suffering throughout their lives, or who are 
more likely than not to be left in helpless orphanage 
while they are yet infants. Consumptives, scrofulous 
persons, and persons with hereditary tendency to in- 


PROPER CHOICE OF PERSONS. 


553 


sanity, should carefully consider this before marriage. 
It has already been said in the chapter on Bodily Nat¬ 
ure (page 39), that mental and moral as well as phy¬ 
sical tendencies are inherited. Somewhere I have 
read the history of four generations of a certain family. 
The father was a drunkard ; the son inherited these 
tendencies, and was also a drunkard ; the grandson was 
sober, but was melancholy and semi-idiotic, and, I 
believe, committed suicide ; the great grandson again 
was a drunkard. Some years ago a wealthy and popu¬ 
lar physician near Joliet, Illinois, happy in his domestic 
relations, suicided without apparent cause ; his father, 
under like circumstances, had done the same thing 
before him. 

Hence, persons whose lives have been such as to 
bring disease of any kind upon them, or to taint their 
moral natures, should, in justice to the world, refrain 
from matrimony, and not marry, to leave behind them 
a weak-brained, weak-nerved, weak-bodied posterity. 

In guarding the matter of health it is not meant, 

however, that we must go to work with phreno¬ 

logical and physiological line and rule to determine 
who would be the best fitted to mate with us. The 
color of the eyes and hair, the size and figure,— 

these things will generally take care of themselves 

in accordance with the laws of nature. But we must 
watch the mental temperament, tastes, habits, birth, 
aspirations and external circumstances, and see to it 
that they are in harmony. 



554 


LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 


Whittier’s farmer says that 

“Love has naught to do 
With meetness or unmeetness. 

Itself its best excuse, it asks 
No leave of pride or fashion 
When silken zone or homespun frock 
It stirs with throbs of passion.” 

Sometimes indeed, this is true, but not often. It 
is not usual for a woman who has been bred in the 
midst of luxury and refinement to live in harmony 
and content with a husband who must win their daily 
bread, and coarse bread at that, by the veritable 
sweat of his brow. “Silken zone” and “homespun 
frock” go to together very nicely in pastoral poetry, 
but in practice they do not, as a rule, continue long 
in their dove-like billing and cooing; though, to the 
honor of human nature be it said, they sometimes do. 
Wealth, station and habit are real things in the world, 
things which wield a tremendous power, and it is 
well not to oppose them except with the keenest and 
strongest weapons. It is better not to risk the experi¬ 
ment, for life-long misery is consequent upon failure 
in it. It is wiser not to bring home to your humble 
cottage a wife accustomed to the comfort and splendor 
of a mansion, for seldom do we find strength of mind 
and heart sufficient to bear up carefully under the 
hardships necessarily attending the change of circum¬ 
stances. And on the other hand, if you are wealthy, 
you can generally do better than to bring home as 
mistress of your house a woman to whom surround- 


PROPER CHOICE OF PERSONS. 


555 


ings such as yours are strange, and who will not be 
able to sustain the dignity of your household, and 
move with grace in the society into which her 
new position will lead her. Goethe’s marriage with 
Christiane Vulpius is thought to have caused him a 
great many unhappy hours. He was refined, aristo¬ 
cratic, artistic; she, coarse, humble and uneducated. 

A great many lives have been rendered wretched 

» 

by an unwise pairing of people of opposite habits 
and training. Milton, quiet, scholarly, and recluse in 
his methods of living, married a woman accustomed 
to the gayety usual among wealthy royalist families. 
As a result of this disparity, she deserted him a few 
weeks after marriage. Under ordinary circumstances, 
it is not wise for a person of education and cultured 
tastes to marry one without these accomplishments. 
A great many people so situated marry with the 
expectation that the educated party will train the 
uneducated one up to his level. The sequel com¬ 
monly shows a result directly opposed to this, the 
lower level, instead of the higher, is the one upon 
which both parties stand after a period of years. 
Andrew Johnson was an ignorant tailor when a young 
man; his wife educated him after marriage, and he 
finally became President of the United States. But 
Andrew Johnson was possessed of uncommon will 
and intellectual power, and the average young man 
could scarcely be advised to make an attempt at 
stepping in his tracks — the strides are too long. It 
would be with him as it was with the youthful David 



55 ^ 


LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 


when he put on Saul’s armor which was too heavy 
for him; he tried to go, but could not. 

In Paul’s second epistle to the people of Corinth, 
he enjoins them thus: “ Be ye not unequally yoked 
together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath 
righteousness with unrighteousness ? and what com¬ 
munion hath light with darkness? And what concord 
hath Christ with Belial ? or what part hath he that 
believeth with an infidel?” The apostle’s rule is an 
excellent one on prudential grounds. But this rule, 
like the preceding ones, is not absolute. It is only 
a general hint which may best be acted on or dis¬ 
carded according to special circumstances. Where 
there is strong, steady love, its force will overpower all 
hindering circumstances and make plain the roughest 
road. 

The mother of a distinguished scholar, when 
young and wishing to marry, was told by her father: 
“We do not know whence this man came.” “I know 
whither he is going,” she replied, “and I want to go 
with him.” She was right; of yet more importance 
than birth, education, and financial or social circum¬ 
stances, are the future hopes and plans of life of the 
interested persons. It is necessary that they should 
be consistent. If the personal aims and wishes of 
husband and wife are incompatible, there will be 
jarring and discord all through their married life. 
If, for example the husband aims at scholarship or 
wealth, and the wife at gayety and society, as in 
Milton’s case, or the wife at quiet and domestic 


PROPER CHOICE OF PERSONS. 


557 


happiness and the husband at dissipation and frolic,' 
their interests will conflict, and the result will be 
petulance and dissatisfaction, if, indeed, there is noth¬ 
ing worse. It is a law of physics that if two forces 
are operating upon a body in opposite directions, the 
resultant force by which the body moves is only 
equal to the difference between the original forces; 
and that if they operate in the same direction the 
resultant force is equal to the sum of the two original • 
forces. A man and his wife are two forces. If they 
pull in opposite directions each tends to destroy the 
power of the other, and little or nothing is accom¬ 
plished by the expenditure of their energy. But if 
they work in the same direction, the result is the 
sum of their individual powers. Be careful then, 
young man or young woman, that the life-aims of 
the one you select for your companion harmonize 
with yours. It is better to work alone than to have 
your exertions neutralized by the opposite exertions 
of your comrade. 


It seems scarcely necessary to say that marriage 
ought not to grow out of anything but love. So- 
called “marriages of convenience” are abominations. 
“ Love gives itself, but is not bought,” says Long¬ 
fellow. A brown-stone front and a bank account are 
not essential factors in love, and should not be made 
essential factors in marriage. A loveless pair, living 


553 


LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 


together because the law compels them to do so, and 
because their children must be cared for, is truly a 
sight worthy of pity. 

Never marry any one merely because he or she is 
thought attractive by others: 

“What care I how fair she be, 

If she be not fair to me?” 

If she be fair to you and to others as well, their 
judgment confirms yours, which may be a gratification 
to you. But if she be not fair to you, the fact that 
others appreciate her cannot add one iota to your 
enjoyment. In such matters^you had best follow your 
own mind, only be sure that you know your mind. 
Perhaps the most ridiculous and utterly inexcusable 
inducement to marriage is spite. It happens often 
that lovers quarrel, and then one or both marry some 
other party out of mere spite. Such deserve all the 
misery that generally falls to their lot. 





Tastes, circumstances, and other elements being 
suitable, and the young people being about to enter 
upon that interesting courtship period, what is their 
first and most important duty ? I should answer, that 
of all things the one they need most now to practice 
is absolute honesty toward each other. If ever there 
is a time when deceit is proper, it certainly is not 
during courtship. All kinds of unfairness in this 


MUTUAL HONESTY. 


559 


matter are in the highest degree wicked, because the 
injury is not a mere temporary one. It lasts for a life 
time, and breeds misery constantly. Financial con¬ 
dition, education, expectations, character, habits of life, 
all essential things, should be faithfully and fairly made 
known to each other. Was there ever a more miser¬ 
able, more pitiable sight than that of a man and 
woman, each poor in the world’s goods, who have 
married because each had supposed the other to be 
wealthy ? Such cases are by no means infrequent. 
The common practice of going to the watering places 
or other popular resorts for the purpose of catching 
a rich or influential husband or wife, is one that can¬ 
not be too strongly denounced. It reduces marriage 
to sheer bargain and sale, and is productive of an 
enormous amount of trouble. Miserable indeed is 
the condition of two beings thus united together in 
discord. Life drags heavily on from day to day, while 
the parties live together in the constant practice of 
hypocrisy or in perpetual strife. The heart does not 
light up the smile that plays upon the lips; the soul 
does not participate in the feelings that the tongue is 
compelled to counterfeit. If we continue the deception 
for any considerable period after the utterance of the 
false vow at the altar, we live in daily violation of 
the laws of God, while the adder of conscience con¬ 
tinues to sting deeply our peace of mind. The home, 
that should at once form the source and center of 
all true enjoyment, becomes hateful, and constantly 
reminds us of our baseness. Or, if we at once throw 


560 LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 

off the mask, what a shadowy path will appear in the 
distance ! And not content with possessing ourselves, 
under false pretences, of the fortune of another, we 
consummate the treacherous work, acknowledge the 
baseness of the motive, and thus mingle poison in 
the cup of the betrayed one’s happiness. We thus add 
to the villainy and aggravate the original offense. We 
thus embitter a life that has ventured its all for us and 
destroy an illusion, dearer, perhaps, than life itself. 
We thus entail a living death upon one whose only 
error was a too blind confidence, a too easy credulity, 
or a too susceptible heart. How bitter the fate of 
such a fatally deceived and cruelly betrayed one! 
Aggravated, too, as is often the case, by an eagle-eyed 
jealousy. Counting over the hours of the long winter 
nights, lonely and deserted, a heart breaking with 
disappointment and despair; a mind racked and tor¬ 
tured with a thousand barbed suspicions, and haunted 
with as many terrible thoughts and suggestions. May 
Heaven avert such a fate from any of the fair beings 
within the circle of our readers ! And for the fiend 
who would thus sport with the affections of a woman — 

4 

a fond and confiding creature of the gentler sex—and 
then, tearing the mask from his features, disclose to 
her the monster upon whom she had bestowed her 
hand and lavished her heart, if there be a lower deep 
than the raging and burning of his own conscience, 
such must be his merited portion. 

Avoid, we pray you, gentle readers, a discordant, 
a merely ambitious, or a mercenary marriage. Avoid, 




MUTUAL HONESTY. 56 I 

as you would a serpent, the smooth-tongued villain 
with a fair face, a fine form, and subtle tongue — 
a hollow smile, and a hand with no heart in it — who 
prowls about seeking to betray. The Italian bravo, 
who creeps through the shadows with a poniard 
beneath his cloak, is a noble spirit compared with 
such a wretch. The one dooms his victim to a 
single blow and a rapid death — the other protracts 
the dreadful process for years, and snaps the cords 
of the heart one by one, and each with added 
anguish. 

There is another phase of dishonesty which is, if 
anything, even more common than the concealment 
of the financial condition: it is deception in regard 
to personal habits and temperaments. The young 

lady who is at all other times slovenly, lazy, or ill- 
tempered, will be, in the presence of her gentleman 
friends, and especially in that of one whom she wishes 
for a husband, the perfection of neatness, a model 
of industry in temper, an angel on earth; and the 
young man will undergo a correspondingly strange 
transformation. While it is right that each should 
be as agreeable and attractive as possible in the 
other’s company, it is not right that either should 
be kept in the dark as to any essential qualities of 
the other. If there is any hereditary disease, or 
other physical infirmity, it should frankly be made 
known. Physical health is a necessary basis for a 
complete and happy married life. No man would 
wish that his children should inherit disease or weak- 
36 


1 




562 LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 

ness, and he has a right to know if there be any 
likelihood of such misfortune. So all mental and 
moral defects which are not easily observable should 
be revealed. If they are left to be discovered after 
marriage, figures cannot compute the sorrow they 
will produce. If there is any blot in the past history 
of one, the other should be made acquainted with it. 
No attempt should be made at deception in regard 
to education, family connections, or social standing. 
The hopes, prospects, and aspirations of each are 
things of which the other has a right to expect full 
information. In short, the most complete and abso¬ 
lute honesty should be maintained. If there is any 
impediment to a happy marriage, it is better that it 
should be known before the final and irrevocable 
step has been taken. Now , the sorrow can be 

avoided; then, it can only be endured in patience. 

\ 

Still another kind of dishonesty and insincerity 
which is alarmingly prevalent in this country and at 
this time, is the practice of deceit as to the inten¬ 
tions. There is too much of coquetry and flirtation 
going on in society. It is a crime of no light dye 
for a person of either sex to grow into the affections 
of one of the other only to desert without a proper 
cause. Many hearts, notwithstanding the assertion 
of the man of the world to the contrary, have been 
broken by disappointment in love, from sheer base¬ 
ness on the part of the loved one. Affection is a 
serious thing, and ought not to be thus lightly trifled 
with. It would be better if we had the rigid custom 

O 


MUTUAL HONESTY. 


563 


of the eighteenth century of Scotland, when the 
young man and woman plighted their faith with their 
hands upon the family Bible, and when a betrothal 
was almost as sacred as a marriage — a promise to 
be broken only upon the best of grounds. An engage¬ 
ment of marriage ought not be terminated except for 
some serious incompatibility of disposition discovered 
after it was entered into, or for some inexcusable 
breach of faith. But when such a discovery is made, 
it is undoubtedly better to dissolve the contract than 
to take a false oath at the altar, and live a false life 
thereafter. 

It has already been said that marriage ought not 
to be based upon anything but mutual love. An 
engagement of marriage should not then be made 
until the contracting parties are thoroughly assured 
that a strong and lasting reciprocal affection exists 
betwen them; and when the engagement is once 
formed, no pains should be spared to bind the tie 
of affection closer and closer. All the little atten¬ 
tions and marks of love and respect should be 
observed. Each should avoid all acts which could 
possibly have a tendency" to excite jealousy or dis¬ 
trust on the part of the other. Each should con¬ 
centrate his thoughts upon the other, and try to 
discover all the beauties that may exist in his char¬ 
acter and person, and to look with charitable eyes 
upon his faults. Everything like anger or petulance 
or ‘Movers’ quarrels” should be studiously avoided. 
Quarrelsome lovers are not likely to make happy, 



564 


LOVER AND SWEETHEART. 


harmonious companions after marriage; and if quar¬ 
rels are very frequent, they had best conclude that 
they are not really fitted for each other, but are 
only laboring under a delusion, fascinated, perhaps, 
by beauty, or some other external grace. 


t 









A^D 


j 


3 




m 

JO see two rational beings in the glow of 
1 youth and hope which invests life with 
f the halo of happiness, appear together, 
and openly acknowledging their preference, 
for each other, voluntarily enter into a 
league of perpetual friendship, and call 
heaven and earth to witness the sincerity 
of the solemn vows — to think of the 


I? 


endearing connection, the important con¬ 
sequences, the final separation, the smile 
that kindles to ecstacy at their union 
must at length be quenched in the tears 
of mourning! — but while life continues, 
they are to participate in the same joys, 
to endure the like sorrows, to rejoice and weep in 
unison, — this is the most interesting spectacle that 
social life exhibits. 


“As unto the bow the cord is, 

So unto the man is woman, 

Though she bends him, she obeys him, 

Though she draws him, yet she follows: 

Useless each without the other! ” 

Better than the best of friends is a good wife. 
Perhaps we should rather say that a good wife is 
the best of all friends. What is it to woman that 


565 

































5 66 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


the tempest is darkening on the path of him she 
loves? It is he alone who has power to crush her 
spirit’s strength. It is the breath of unkindness 
only, the unkindness of him to whom her soul has 
clung in its deepest trust, that can wither, beyond 
the power of earthly healings, the energies of her 
nature. But a portion of him, and she the gentle 
and the feeble, whom his slightest neglect would 
crush as with a heel of iron, goes smilingly and 
gladly forth to be a sharer in the fury and the 
desolation of the storm. All other ties may be 
severed — penury, bereavement, the world’s scorn, 
all other agonies may be meted out to her in her 
cup of bitterness — and yet her heart, however deli¬ 
cately fashioned, hath not utterly lost its capability 
of sweet harmonies. They will still break forth at 
his touch — his whispered words of soothing will 
pass over the mangled and bleeding tendons of her 
soul, like the breath of spring healing the wounded 
vine; and all sufferings will be accounted as a 
price of naught for that tenderness which has bound 
up its wounds. 

We hold it essential to a young mans success, 
whether his calling be that of a merchant or trader, 
priest, engineer, or lawyer, artist or man of letters, 
that he should marry well and marry early. “Family 
and poverty,” says Power, “have done more to support 
me than I have to support them. They have com¬ 
pelled me to make exertions that I hardly thought 
myself capable of; and often when on the eve of 





HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


567 


despairing, they have forced me, like a coward in a 
corner, to fight like a hero, not for myself, but for my 
Avife and little ones.” Washington Irving relates that 
he was once congratulating a friend who had around 
him a blooming family, knit together with the strongest 
affection. “I can wish you no better lot,” said the 
friend, with enthusiasm, “ than to have a wife and 
children. If you are prosperous, there they are to 
share your prosperity; if otherwise, there they are 
to comfort you. And, indeed,” he continues, “ I have 
observed that a married man, falling into misfortune, 
is more apt to retrieve his situation in the world than 
a single one; partly because he is more stimulated to 
exertion by the necessities of the helpless and beloved 
beings who depend upon him for subsistence; but 
chiefly because his spirits are soothed and relieved by 
domestic endearments, and his self-respect is kept 
alive by finding, that though all abroad is darkness 
and humiliation, yet there is still a little world of love 
at home, of which he is the monarch. Whereas, a 
single man is apt to run to waste and self-neglect; to 
fancy himself lonely and abandoned, and his heart 
to fall to ruin, like some deserted mansion, for want 
of an inhabitant.” 

Some years ago, Dr. Stark, in Edinburgh, read a 
paper concerning the influence of marriage upon length 
of life. His calculations were based upon the statistics 
of the Register-General, and they present some very 
interesting facts. It was shown that between the ages 
of twenty and twenty-five years, the death-rate among 


5 68 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


bachelors was just double that among married men. 
Among married men the mean age was fifty-nine and 
a half years, while bachelors only reached an average 
of forty years — a difference of nineteen and a half 
years in the expectation of life, in favor of the married 
men. Nearly one half the deaths among bachelors 
occurred before they reached the age of thirty years. 
Married women, also, were found to reach a greater 
average age than those unmarried, though the differ¬ 
ence was not so striking as in the other sex. Dr. 
Stark concluded that married life was clearly best 
calculated to promote long life, health and happiness. 

“ The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth, 

Life’s paradise, great prizes, the soul’s quiet, 

Sinews of concord, earthly immortality, 

Eternity of pleasures.” 

As no other relation into which people can enter 
with each other, is so permanent and so intimate as 
that of matrimony, there is no other which demands 
so strict a performance of duty, in order that it may 
not degenerate into a state of continual, bitter dis¬ 
cord ; and there is no other in which the duties are 
so numerous and so varied in their character. They 
are as many and as different as the occasions of life.. 
Each day, each hour, brings forth its new and special 
obligations. 

Still there are a few general duties that embrace 
many particular ones, and that are of a special impor¬ 
tance, and of some of these we will speak. 



FIDELITY AND HONESTY. 


569 



AND Mi 


Honesty, 


As the most important duty in courtship was seen 
to be honesty, so we shall find it in married life. 
Marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship, 
and there can be no friendship without confidence, 
and no confidence without integrity; and he must 
expect to be wretched who pays to beauty, riches, or 
politeness, that regard which only virtue and piety 
can claim. Deceit and insincerity are not a good 
foundation on which to try to build a pleasant, 
profitable life in any sphere, and especially they do 
not serve the purposes of home life. Perfect frank¬ 
ness should be one of the principal rules of husbands 
and wives in all their dealings with each other. Thou¬ 
sands of families have been ruined by a violation of 
this principle. How many bankruptcies every year 
are attributed to the extravagance of wives! And 
how many of these wives, think you, would have been 
so extravagant, had they known the true financial 
condition of their husbands ? On the surface, the 
men seemed to be doing a large and flourishing 
business; but their prosperity was hollow, a fact 
which they knew, and which their wives did not 
know. A woman can scarcely be blamed for living 
up to what she believes to be her husband’s means. 
A little frankness on his part would obviate these 
difficulties, and the trouble and disgrace of a failure 
in business would sometimes be avoided. 


5/0 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


When the tale-bearer comes with his poisonous 
words, if the one who seems to have been wronged 
would go frankly to the other and ask about the 
reported injury, instead of harboring distrust, and 
perhaps hate, in his bosom, until it has grown into 
huge dimensions, what a world of trouble would be 
saved ! 

Between man and wife, a system of concealment, 
prevarication and falsehood is not only culpable and 
wicked, but it must sooner or later lead to the 
destruction of everything like confidence—of all 
harmony of feeling — of esteem, respect, and affec¬ 
tion. Alas for that condition of existence which is 
made up of daily and hourly illustrations of deceit 
and treachery — alas for the miserable beings who 
are bound together for life, and who, nevertheless, 
cannot bare their hearts to each other, cannot look 
into each other’s faces with frankness and confi¬ 
dence— who, in brief, are in the daily utterance and 
practice of falsehood. They are in constant bondage 
to guile, and the galley-slave chained to his oar 
must be happy in comparison. Avoid then, gentle 
reader — avoid as you would some deadly poison, 
-everything like falsehood or deceit toward the object 
of your friendship or affection, for although the 
deception may succeed for months or even years, 
detection will inevitably come, and the betrayed and 
indignant victim will turn with jealous horror upon 
the past; and the fatal policy, even if forgiven, will 
never be forgotten. 






FIDELITY AND HONESTY. 5 71 

Another requirement of honesty is that a man 
and his wife should never fail to keep all promises 
with each other. Nothing can more strongly tend 
to keep alive their mutual confidence and respect, 
than the habit of rigid adherence to all engage¬ 
ments. If either promises to do something for the 
•other, no matter how insignificant the service may 
be, he should do it. Cobbett, the celebrated radi¬ 
cal politician of England, was a pattern in the faith¬ 
fulness with which he observed all promises made 
to his wife. He says that, though he was very 
often away from home, he never once disappointed 
her as to the time when he would return. If he 
could not fix a definite day upon his departure, as 
:soon as it was possible he would do so; and when 
that day arrived, he was sure to arrive with it. 
Once, when journeying from London to Botley, with 
a friend named Finnerty, the two stopped at Alton 
to dine with a gentleman, and becoming deeply 
interested in their conversation, they remained until 
eleven o’clock, when Cobbett, against the entreaties 
of the others, insisted that he must go home, or 
his wife would be alarmed at his non-arrival. 

“ Blood, man,” said Finnerty, “ you do not mean to 
go home to-night?” Cobbett said that he certainly 
did, and ordered his vehicle brought. The distance 
yet to travel was twenty-three miles, and on the way 
a discussion arose as to whether Mrs. Cobbett would 
be up to receive them. Cobbett affirmed, and Finnerty 
-denied. When they arrived, at about two o’clock in 


57 2 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


the morning, Mrs. Cobbett was up, and had a warm, 
cheerful fire waiting for them. “You did not expect 
him?” exclaimed Finnerty, in astonishment. “To be 
sure I did,” she replied ; “ he never disappointed me in 
his life.” How well it would be if all husbands would 
copy Cobbett’s practice ! 

Patience. 

Next in importance to honesty, probably, is patience, 
Horace says that patience makes that more tolerable 
which it is impossible to prevent or remove. A poet 
speaks of patience as an angel which sits by a man, 
holding out a full bowl of rich content, from which he 
may take large draughts. Another calls it “ sorrows 
salve ” ; it is a balm that heals all troubles. 

“ The kindest and the happiest pair 
Will find occasion to forbear ; 

And something, every day they live, 

To pity, and perhaps forgive.” 

Scarcely a day passes whose even course is not 
marred by some occurrence calculated in its nature 
to vex and worry us; it may be trouble in business, 
it may be the evil tale of a slanderer, or it may be 
some hasty, thoughtless act or word which calls for 
the exercise of patience. The wife is cross and 
wearied by her household labors and disappoint¬ 
ments ; an impatient word from the husband will 
start a family brawl which is neither dignified nor 
conducive to happiness; a little kind forbearance 


PATIENCE. 


573 


would have soothed her, the cloud would have soon 
passed by, and the strife would have been averted. 
So when the husband is troubled and anxious, when 

It 

the cares and crosses of business weigh heavily upon 
him, and he seems moody and crestfallen, a gentle 
word and an affectionate caress from the wife will 
clear up his brow and cause him to forget his 
trouble. Perhaps no better rule could possibly be 
adopted by a young married couple, than this: 
Never both be cross at once. 


Continued. Affection. 

“The moment a woman marries/' says Bulwer, 
“some terrible revolution happens in her system; all 
her good qualities vanish, presto, like eggs out of a 
conjuror’s box ; ’tis true that they appear on the other 
side of the box, but for the husband they are gone 
forever.” This is one of the outgrowths of dis¬ 
honesty in courtship. The lovers have hidden all 
their bad qualities and displayed all their good ones, 
and now that they are married, they swing by a 
natural reaction to the other end of the arc, and 
hiding their good qualities, as if they were holiday 
clothes, and must be shut up in a closet away from 
the light, they display their bad ones. Now, my 
dear friend, your husband or your wife has more 
right than anybody else in the world to see what¬ 
ever of good or beautiful there is in you. It is of 
no great consequence what Mr. Roe or Miss Doe 


574 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


thinks of you, but it is of the greatest import that 

✓ 

your life-companion should think you the manliest, 
man or the most womanly woman in existence, and 
you had best strain every nerve to convince him of 
that fact. Young wife, consider — your husband would 
rather eat beefsteak from a shining platter than capon 
from dirty dishes. Contentment, together with neat¬ 
ness and virtuous industry, is the finest spice, and 

X » 

will add a delightful flavor to the humblest meal. 
The ancients understood this. Horace, in his beau- 
tiful “ Second Epode,” which has been a model for 
all subsequent poets who would sing the praises of 
country life, says: 

‘‘And when a modest wife on her side aids to care 
For darling children and for home, 

Such as a Sabine woman, or the sun-browned spouse 
Of some robust Apulian, 

And heaps the sacred fireplace up with seasoned wood 
Before her weary husband comes ; 

And shutting up the joyful drove in hurdle pens, 

From swollen udders draws the milk ; 

And from the dolium extracting this year’s wine, 

Her unbought viands she prepares; 

No greater pleasure would the Lucrene oysters, or 
The turbot, or the scar-fish give, 

If, thundered forth across the eastern waves, a storm 
Should ever turn them to this sea ; 

Nor to my palate would the Guinea fowl or the 
Ionian attagen be more 

Delightful than the olives gathered from the most 
Prolific branches of the tree, 

The bunches of the meadow-loving sorrel, or 
The mallow, wholesome for the weak, 

Or lambkins slaughtered at the Terminalia, 

Or kids snatched from the greedy wolf,” 



CONTINUED AFFECTION. 


575 


Your husband would rather walk upon a rag carpet 
kept clean, than upon Brussels covered with dust and 
litter. He would rather see you in neat wrapper of 
calico or gingham, than in slovenly, ill-fitting robe 
of silk. Flowers are pleasanter to him than cobwebs. 
Slight ornaments of your making please him more 
than shabby tinsel from the notion-stores. He will 
rejoice more if he finds you busy with household duties 
or a good book, than if he finds you lounging over a 
season’s novel. Kindness and patience to all about 
you, himself included, will be more attractive than 
harshness or petulance. If you have read some well- 
selected book or good newspaper, you can have a 
subject of conversation more welcome than neighbor¬ 
hood gossip or fashion plates. In brief — be as neat, 
as obliging, as even-tempered, as industrious, as 
cheerful, now, as before your marriage you led him 
to think you were. And young husband, if you 
would see all these desirable qualities blooming in 
your wife, remember that you have duties as important 
to perform on your side. Before marriage, you were 
polite, attentive, affectionate, were you not? Did you 
not postpone your convenience to hers? Were you 
not careful to shield her from all dangers and hard¬ 
ships ? Did you not always show her the best side 
of your nature? Were you not always good-humored 
and cheerful? Did you not strive to entertain her 
and make your interviews pleasant with the riches of 
your reading and experience? Did you not praise 
her and show appreciation of the little tokens she gave 



• 5/6 HUSBAND AND WIFE. 

you? Do and be all that now. Try to make her life 
;as pleasant as possible. Your marriage gives room 
for the display of lovable qualities which you could 
not show her before. Be liberal with her. Anticipate 

i in, 

her wants, as far as may be. Do not let her feel 
that she must beg and coax for a week before she 
can get the money for a new dress, or hat, or whatever 
-else she may want. If you can, grant her request at 
once, and pleasantly, not grudgingly. If you cannot, 
.say so ; and kindly and fully explain why. My word 
for it, if she is a worthy woman, she will not take it 
ill of you, but will willingly confine her wants within 
the bounds of your ability to supply. 

There is an old story told of Jonathan Trumbull 
which will illustrate the importance of continuing exhi¬ 
bitions of affection after marriage. When Trumbull 
was governor of the State of Connecticut, a gentle¬ 
man called at his house one day, requesting a priv¬ 
ate interview. He said: “I have called upon a very 
unpleasant errand, sir, and want your advice. My 
wife and I do not live happily together, and I am 
thinking of getting a divorce. What do you advise, 
sir?” The governor sat a few moments in thought; 
then, turning to his visitor, said, “ How did you treat 

Mrs. W-when you were courting her? and how did 

you feel toward her at the time of your marriage?” 

"Squire W- replied, “ I treated her as kindly as I 

could, for I loved her dearly at that time.” “Well, 
sir,” said the governor, “go home and court her now 
just as you did then, and love her as when you married 




CONTINUED AFFECTION. 


577 


her. Do this in the fear of God for one year, and then 
tell me the result.” When a year passed away, ’Squire 

W-called again to see the governor, and said : “ I 

have called to thank you for the good advice you gave 
me, and to tell you that my wife and I are as happy as 
when first we were married. I cannot be grateful 

enough for your good counsel.” “ I am glad to hear 

\ 

it, Mr. W-,” said the governor, “ and I hope you 

will continue to court your wife as long as you live.” 

Sharing Cares and Hoys. 

Man and woman should be not only companions, 
but helpmates to each other. There is nothing 
which so much helps the hardworked housewife as 
a word of appreciation and a little assistance cheer¬ 
fully given. Some little service, outside of the 
regular routine, will gladden her heart, and lighten 
her labors for a whole day. There is no other 
thing that will so much encourage and strengthen 
a weary man, worn by the toils of business, as the 
knowledge that his wife is full of sympathy for him 
and is trying to help him in every way that she can. 
It is not right that all the burdens of life should 
fall upon the man. The woman should be willing, 
more than that, she should be anxious, to help bear 
them. The woman whose husband toils all day in 
the office, shop, or counting-house, struggling to 
advance the position of himself and family, and who 
herself seems to have no ideas above the frivolous 


37 




5/8 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


demands of fashion, or the desire of luxurious ease, 
is a poor lean-souled creature. And yet how many 
there are, to whom this description applies; they 
seem to have married solely for the purpose of 
having a younger man to work for the procurance 
of the luxuries they desire, after they have worn 
their fathers out, — just as one parts with an old 
decrepit horse that he may buy one younger, and 
one capable of performing more labor. 

They have not sense enough to see, or heart 

enough to feel, that their interests and those of their 

husbands are identical. Instead of this, they should 
employ at least a considerable portion of their time 
in managing their household affairs as wisely as they 
can. Ordinarily, it is the man’s duty to supply the 
wants of the household, but the woman’s work in 
managing and economizing the money he allows her, 
is almost as valuable as his in making it. For those 
whose wealth lifts them above the necessity of 

watching their expenditures closely, there is still 
enough to do in caring for the training of their 

children, and guarding them from the temptations 
that particularly beset the children of wealthy parents. 
Home will be a very much happier and more attractive 
place if this spirit of mutual helpfulness exists; and 
people who find that married life is not yielding them 
the enjoyment which they expected, will do well to try 
the experiment of earnestly helping each other for 
awhile and see what results it will bring forth. 



MUTUAL KINDNESS. 


579 


JHutual Kindness. 

The last duty to be spoken of here is that of 
general kindness, a constant endeavor to make each 
other happier. Says an old poet: 

“ Kindness has resistless charms, 

All things else but weakly move; 

Fiercest anger it disarms, 

And clips .the wings of flying love.” 


This is the sugar and spice of existence; if all the 
other duties that have been spoken of are carefully 
observed, a person may lead a calm, tasteless sort of 
life, without much pain, but yet without much pleasure. 
With this added to the others, life becomes a dream of 
happiness. A pleasant word, a gentle smile, an act 
of loving forethought, can do so much to make life 
better worth living. Let each try also to make the 
surroundings of the other as beautiful and cheerful 
as possible. It is an old saying that bare walls make a 
gadding housewife. Let there be pianos, and many 
books, luxurious furniture, spacious apartments, and 
pleasant lawns, if it may be ; but if, as is most likely, 
these things are out of reach on account of their costli¬ 
ness, everyone can, at least, have flowers, simple, home¬ 
made ornaments, a few books and papers, song, and 
above all, kind treatment. 

To sum up all the duties particularly appertaining 
to the relations of husband and wife, we may say: let 
each try honestly and persistently to make home a 


5 §o 


HUSBAND AND WIFE. 


happy place. Do not be discouraged at one, or ten, 
or a hundred difficulties and failures. Keep on trying; 
the results will not disappoint you in the end, if the 
experiment is fairly and fully tried. Let neither expect 
perfection in the other; but let each strive faithfully, 
though unostentatiously, to attain it himself. 



* 





Duties of §arerts rrd Children. 


HAT gift has Providence bestowed on man, 




cares of life ; but they mitigate the remembrance of 
death,” says Bacon. 

“Ah! what would the world be to us 
If the children were no more? 

We should dread the desert behind us 
Worse than the dark before. 

“What the leaves are to the forest, 

With light and air for food, 

Ere their sweet and tender juices 
Have been hardened into wood,— 

“That to the world are children; 

Through them it feels the glow 
Of a brighter and sunnier climate 
Than reaches the trunks below.” 

581 


that is so dear to him as are his chil¬ 
dren?” “I love these little people,” says 
Dickens; “and it is not a slight thing 
when they, who are so fresh from God, 
love us.” “Call not that man wretched, 
who, whatever ills he suffers, has a child 
to love.” 

But all this blessedness of children is 
not given to us without an accompani¬ 
ment of many duties to perform. “ Chil¬ 
dren sweeten labors ; but they make mis¬ 
fortune more bitter: they increase the 






















I 


582 DUTIES TO PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

The child is born into the world perhaps the most 
helpless of all infant creatures, and his period of help¬ 
lessness is, perhaps, the longest,— continuing until the 
age of twelve or twenty years. It thus becomes the 
parent’s duty to care for the helpless being he has 
/ brought into existence, to provide for his present wants, 
and to train him for his future work, to the best of his 
ability. Of course, the first and most indispensable 
service is the provision of material necessities, such 
as food and clothing. These should be sufficient for 
health ; and a child should not be compelled to 
undergo the mortification of wearing poor clothes 
when the parents can afford'him good ones. The 
child’s sensibilities are very acute on this point, much 
more so than ours. In any case, whether the clothes 
be plain or costly, they should be sufficient for the 
comfort of the child, and for his complete protection 
against the inclemency of the weather. His health 
is his most precious possession, and should not be 
endangered by exposure. His food should be ample 
in quantity, but plain and nutritious. It is a mistake 
which involves very serious consequences to allow chil¬ 
dren rich and indigestible food. They pay the penalty 
of this early abuse by a life of disease and suffering. 

Education of Iead and Ieart. 

The most important duty which a parent owes to 
his child, after that of feeding and clothing him, is that 
of training him to live honorably and successfully in the 


\ 



EDUCATION OF HEAD AND HEART. 583 

\ 

world when he shall have gone out as a man to fight 
his own battles. ' Manhood carries with it a serious 
and important charge which it will tax the energies 
of the strongest to perform properly. The youth 
cannot be too well prepared for the work he has 
to face; none of the strength which he may have 
acquired in the practice of his early days will prove 
superfluous ; the only danger is that it will be insuffi¬ 
cient. We have seen that the highest aim of man 
is physical, mental, and moral perfection. It follows 
then that the kind of training due from the parent 
to the child is that which will carry him farthest on . 
his road to a perfect life, and best fit him to travel 
that road for himself after he passes out from the 
control of his parents. The earliest care of the 
parent should be to look after the physical welfare 
of the child. With most children this is a passive 
duty rather than an active one ; for the child is gen¬ 
erally ready and anxious to exercise all the powers 
of his body. The only thing the parent has to do 
is to see that the exercise is taken under proper 

conditions, and not otherwise to interfere with it. 

• / 

Let the little folks play; it does them more good 
than anything else they could possibly engage in. 

It strengthens their limbs, and keeps their faculties 
awake and active. They are brim-full of fun now, 
and running over with energy. The time will come 
after a while when nature will compel them to sober 
down ; now, while they can, let them be active and 
Besides, it furnishes a fund of happy mem- 


joyous. 


584 DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

ories which in after years will be a source of much 
strength in times of labor and trouble. Most men 

o 

who have accomplished great things were in their 
boyhood, active, energetic, and fun-loving. A happy 
childhood seems to lend a buoyant force to the spirit, 
which enables it to rise above the billows of sorrow, 
disappointment and danger, that would overwhelm a 
weaker soul. 

The contrast, in personal appearance and manner, 
between a child trained under the winning management 
of a wise, firm, commanding love, and another sub¬ 
jected to the despotic control of fear, is very striking. 
In the former, we observe a sprightly eye and open 
countenance, with a genial vivacity and trustfulness of 
the general expression of the body; a mixture of 

confiding socialty with intelligence, an alacrity of move- 

* * 

ment, and a healthiness of soul, evinced in generous 
activity and smiles. Even if the body be enfeebled, 
still a certain bright halo surrounds, as it were, the 
mental constitution. But physical, as well as intel¬ 
lectual vigor and enjoyment, are usually the happy 
result of that freedom of heart and generosity of spirit, 
which skillful affection endeavors to encourage. Then, 
in youth and manhood, a noble intelligence confirms 
the propriety of such early training; but the child who 
finds a tyrant instead of a fostering parent, if naturally ' 
delicate, acquires a timid bearing, a languid gait, a 
sallow cheek, a pouting lip, a stupid torpidity, or a 
sullen defiance; for Nature’s defense from tyranny is 
either hard stupidity or cunning daring. 


EDUCATION OF HEAD AND HEART. 


5S5 


A little later the mental faculties begin to develop 
and to need assistance, training and direction. The 
cultivation of the mind is as important as that of 
the body. A strong body without a strong mind to 
guide and control it, would be useless, or worse than 
useless. It would be like a river unconfined by banks, 
or an engine running without the master hand of the 
engineer,— a force incapable of good, but able to do, 
and likely to do, much harm. Every parent owes 
it, then, to his child, as far as possible, to give him all 
the mental culture which he is capable of receiving. It 
was just mentioned that the mind is somewhat later in 
developing than the body. To be sure, it begins its 
growth with the dawn of life, but the growth is slower, 
and if healthy, must be based upon that of the body. 
This leads us to a criticism upon the treatment of a 
great many children by their parents. It is not neces¬ 
sary, and it is not wise, to crowd the young child’s 
mind with abstractions. He can learn his letters and 
begin to read at the age of three years, but there are a 
great many other things that he had better be doing at 
that age. Some of the finest books in the world were 
never printed. 

Good parent, instead of setting your little one 
at work on c-o-w, cow, and o-x, ox, (which, bye 
the bye, he is just as apt to get o-x, cow, as any 
other way), take him by the hand and lead him 
out into the garden, some bright spring morning, 
and, showing him the seeds, bid him watch you as 
you put them into the ground and cover them up 



586 DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

» 

with rich warm earth. You may plant the seeds - in 
such a way as to form some figure easily recogniz¬ 
able, in order more strongly to attract his attention. 
In a few weeks, lead him out again and show him 
the tiny plants just peeping out of the soil, and 
forming the same figure he saw when you planted 
the seeds. From that time on, have him watch every 
stage of the growth of the plant,—how it shoots up, 
puts forth leaves, then buds, then comes forth in all 
the glory of bloom, and finally withers away. In 
like manner, show him the rocks, the streams, the 
clouds, the trees, the birds, the sun, the moon, the 
stars. Teach him how to use his eyes, and his ears, 

* and all his other senses. The reason why the child 
says o-x, cow, is because the spelling of words (and 
words themselves also) is an abstraction, and he is 
not yet ready for that. Show him the cut of an 
animal; — does he say that it is a picture of a horse? 
Not at all: he says, that is a horse, and thinks, not 
of horses in general, but of the horse in his father’s 
stable. Show him the picture of a bison, an animal 
which he never saw;—does .he call it an animal? 
Again, no: he calls it a cow. The child’s mind 
is busy with things, not ideas, and the wisest way 
is to let. him work on things ; he will get to ideas 
after a while. Do not, then, send your tender four, 
or five, or six-year-old to school, where he must 
sit still and be told to study, when he doesn’t 
know what, studying is. Let him run, and play, 
and look at things, and ask questions, and learn 





EDUCATION OF HEAD AND HEART. 587 

all he can about this world he lives in, and at 
the same time get for himself a strong, healthy 
body. As proof of the wisdom of this plan, it 
may be mentioned that what is known as the half¬ 
day system is being tried in the primary schools 
of many cities; and it is found that the children 
learn quite as much in the half-day as they form¬ 
erly did in the whole day. 

A good example of the effect of pushing the minds 
of precocious children, may be found in the life of 
Margaret Davidson, the younger of two sisters remark¬ 
able for their poetical gifts, who died at the ages of 
seventeen and fifteen respectively. It is stated of 
Margaret, that, “when only in her sixth year, her 
language was enervated, and her mind so filled with 
poetic imagery and religious thought, that she read 
with enthusiasm and elegance, Thomson’s ‘Seasons,’ 
‘The Pleasures of Hope,’ Cowper’s ‘Task,’ and the 
writings of Milton, Byron, and Scott. The sacred 
writings were her daily study; and, notwithstanding 
her poetic temperament, she had a high relish for 
history, and read with as much interest an abstruse 
treatise, that called forth the reflective powers, as she 
did poetry or works of imagination. Her physical 
frame was delicately constituted to receive impressions, 
and her mother was capable of observing and improv¬ 
ing the opportunity afforded to instruct her. Nothing 
was learned by rote, and every object of her thought 
was discussed in conversation with a mind sympa¬ 
thizing with her own. Such a course, however, while 


588 DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

it demonstrates the power of the mind, proves also 
that such premature employment of it is inconsistent 
with the physiology of the body; for while the spirit 
reveled in the ecstacies of intellectual excitement, the 
vital functions of the physical frame-work were fatally 
disturbed. She read, she wrote, she danced, she sung, 
and was the happiest of the happy; but, while the 
soul thus triumphed, the body became more and more 
delicate, and speedily failed altogether under the 
successive transports.” 

The brain of a child, however forward, is totally 
unfit for that intellectual exertion to which many fond 
parents either force or excite it. Fatal disease is thus 
frequently induced; and where death does not follow, 
idiocy, or at least such confusion of faculty ensues, 
that the moral perception is obscured, and the sensitive 
child becomes a man of hardened vice or of insane 
self-will. 

But by all means, give them an education, and 
they will accumulate fortunes; they will be a fortune 
themselves, to their country. It is an inheritance 
Avorth more than gold, for it buys true honor: they 
can neither spend nor lose it; and through life it 
proves a friend — in death, a delicate consolation. 
Give your children education, and no tyrant will 
triumph over your liberties. Give your children 
education, and the silver-shod horse of the despot 
Avill never trample on the ruins of the fabric of 
your freedom. 

Especially ought parents to study human nature 



EDUCATION OF HEAD AND HEART. 589 

and become familiar with the elements of mind that 
are common to all. Thus they would be able to see 
in the growing child just what parts of his nature 
were becoming too strong, which too weak. A child 
acts. Now, why did it act so? What motives 
moved it ? What are the full and complete mean¬ 
ings of the habits which the child is forming ? Thus 
would parents know where a limb needed pruning, 
or where one should be engrafted, to make an even 
and a strong topped tree. They would be able to 
cure an evil tendency with a virtuous desire, as one 
nail drives out another. This work should begin in 
the earliest childhood. When a bone is out pf joint, 
the longer the setting is forborne, the greater will 
the pain of the sufferer be; indeed, it may be so 
long neglected that no skill nor art can set it right 
again. 

It should be remembered that “The way to destroy 
ill weeds is to plant good herbs that are contrary.” 
We have all heard of weeds choking the wheat; if we 
were wise we should learn from our enemy, and 
endeavor to choke the weeds by the wheat. Pre¬ 
occupation of mind is a great safeguard from temp¬ 
tation. Fill a bushel with corn and you will keep out 
the chaff; have the heart stored with holy things, and 
the vanities of the world will not so readily obtain 
a lodging-place. Herein is wisdom in the training of 
children. Plant the mind early with the truths of 
God’s word, and error and folly will, in a measure, 
be forestalled. The false will soon spring up if we do 


59° 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


not early occupy the mind with the true. He who said 
that he did not wish to prejudice his boy’s mind by 
teaching him to pray, soon discovered that the devil 
was not so scrupulous, for his boy soon learned to 
swear. It is well to prejudice a field in favor of wheat 
at the first opportunity. The father of a family once 
told Colridge that he had no fears about the future 
habits of his children; he believed they would naturally 
come out all right. Shortly afterward Coleridge invited 
the gentleman to see his fruit garden. They entered 
an inclosure which was overgrown with weeds and 
straggling briars, over which the gentleman gazed in 
surprise. “ Why, where are your strawberries and 
flowers?” said he. “Oh,” said Coleridge, “they will 
grow up in the course of nature, after awhile, I guess. 

I am waiting patiently for them to appear.” 

But that was truly a wise parent who had a work¬ 
shop for his boys, which was thrown open for them 
at certain hours. Little hatchets and augers and 
saws were there at no small expense. That father 
knew that a child should not be driven to work till 
he hates the very name of all useful labor; and on 
the other hand he knew that a confirmed habit of 
chasing butter-flies, or spending time in idle company 
gives little of benefit; and is a narrow foundation 
upon which to build a good character. Let every 
parent read the chapter on “Habit ” (page 329), and 
never for one moment forget the responsibility which 
is his with reference to the formation of proper 
habits in his growing children. Why do children of 


ft 

EDUCATION OF HEAD AND HEART. 591 

the same family often differ so widely in the course 
of their after life? It is generally nothing but some 
little accident which turned the child’s mind into a 
special line of thinking while yet a mere child, and 
this little impetus grew and gathered force till it 
swayed the mind of the young person in making 
a choice for life. Verily do little things move the 
world. Parents! will you leave all this to mere acci¬ 
dents ? Why do you not awaken to these things and 
mold the character of your child understanding^ and 
skillfully while it is yet like soft clay in your hands ? 

EDUCATING THE HEART. 

Many parents, and even many of our highest 
teachers and educators, give too much time to the 
education of the head, while the training of the 
heart is neglected. This is one of the gravest faults 
of our age. We take great pains to teach our 
young folks what they ought to know, but we do 
not explain to them how they ought to feel, and 
mere chance shapes their sentiments and desires. 
This mistake seems to grow out of the fear felt 
by many that if they say very much about morals, 
or heart-training they will be accused of teaching 
religion. This is one of our most shallow-pated 
errors. What is here spoken of is no part of relig¬ 
ion’s business, at all. Even if men in every clime 
on earth were to throw their various bibles all 
away, it would not change the inherent nature of 
man one particle. Man’s mental nature has three 


592 DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

distinct branches; the Intellect, the Sensibilities, and 
the Will (page 54) ; and wherever one branch is 
neglected in its development and education, the 
direst results are sure to follow. It is true, that in 
the past, the cultivation of the Sensibilities and the 
Will, the two higher branches of our nature, has 
been left to our religious teachers ; and it is a dis¬ 
astrous mistake, for the work has been often not 
even begun. Sectarianism is on debatable ground, 
and rightly so, for it is the business of religion to 
be forever in advance of her followers; — reaching 
out into untried realms of the spiritual, purer and 
higher. But the question of educating and elevating 
the feelings and sentiments of our children and 
young people is not open for debate. It is a posi¬ 
tive duty of to-day. Though your views on relig¬ 
ion may not be well decided, you dare not close 
your eyes and refuse to see two thirds of your own 
self, or of the child you have to train. The Intel¬ 
lect, the Sensibilities, the Will, these three form the 
structure of every human being, and neither can be 
safely neglected. 

Our nation is to-day paying the awful penalty of 
too much Intellect or knowledge, and too little of pure 
feelings and steadfast principles. Smartness is a curse 
to a man who is heartless and willful. Smart, but 
unprincipled, men force themselves to the front in our 
public affairs and hold themselves there by base means 
just long enough to damn the common people with the 
contagion of the vile example. The past twenty-five 




* 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 593 

years has seen a. great decay in the direct force of 
religious influences, and as the feelings and sentiments 
of men and their moral choice in the Will were left 
neglected, the result is plain to guess. Poisoned by 
evil examples in high places, we now hear some of our 
old men, a large majority of our young men, and the 
vicious low classes of people everywhere, all saying 
loudly, “ money and brains rule the world! money and 
brains!” And by “brains” they mean knowledge, 
shrewdness, smartness, and cunning. Is it any wonder 
that the ignorant classes, finding themselves no match 
for their smarter fellows in cunning and “lawful 
dishonesty,” are easily tempted to do violence and 
murder to accomplish their desires? The appalling 
increase of crime among the lower classes is but the 
natural result of vast volumes of the twisting and 
evading of law and justice called “lawful dishonesty” 
in the higher classes. All are tempted to say, or at 
least feel, that “money and smartness rule the world.” 

9 

How long it will take us as a people to have the stern 
fact of this mistake scorched into our understanding, 
remains to be seen. 

At any rate it is certainly one of the serious 
responsibilities hanging upon the hands of every par¬ 
ent, and every teacher of either the young or old, 
to give us men and women whose characters are 
evenly developed in all branches. Men and women 
who are not only well informed, but whose feelings 
are under control, who know which are the lower 
or animal forces in their natures, and which are the 


38 


594 DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

higher and nobler sentiments belonging to the pure 
and spiritual side of their being (page 338). The 
world needs men and women who understand the 
nature and responsibility of their will-power, who 
have good habits and know how to mold circum¬ 
stances to their own advancement and spiritual eleva¬ 
tion (page 342), who feel the grand impulses of an 
immortal life throbbing in their bosoms, who have 
genuine force enough, and a knowledge of their own 
nature complete enough, to see and feel forever the 
folly of the common herd who cry out, “ Money and 
smartness rule the world ! ” 

Parents will find the hearts of their children much 
more easily influenced, and that at a much earlier age, 
than their Intellects. The child’s heart begins to be 
educated with its mother’s first frown or smile. This 
is the field wherein your own daily habits of life 
influence the young. Surely no parent dares to rest 
till he understands this matter fully, and has his plans 
carefully laid for bringing his family up toward a 
noble and a perfect life. 

It is a delicate thing to train the Sensibilities (page 
251), for they work just the same in children as in 
older people. While the intellect grows continually, 
from birth to death, the emotions, the affections, and 
desires come early to maturity. This line of training 
can be accomplished only by parents who treat their 
children in many respects as they would grown people; 
not losing authority over them by any means, but by 
joining with them heartily and completely in some 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 


595 


of their childish plans; and instead of laughing at 
their ideas as being of no consequence, make the 
children feel that their life and their work is of real 
importance. The boy who is taken into confidence 
by a manly father and is talked to by that father 
about any branch of the father’s business which the 
boy can understand, in a respectful and earnest way, 
will be known as a manly boy. Children treated in 
this manner will be more likely to confess their mis¬ 
takes and faults rather than conceal them. It is a 
grand thing for a child to have such a confidence 
in the wisdom, justice, and love of his parents. He 
will not be apt to become anything like a liar, or a 
sneak, or a hypocrite. Concealment of acts is a trait 
of animals, and shame is the pain that nature inflicts 
upon us for acting like animals instead of like a 
higher order of beings. Then save the child if you 
can, from ever becoming a sly little fox. Fox-like 
children make wolfish grown people. Shame and 
duplicity debase anyone inwardly. When a child 
cannot show a fearless, honest face, he loses his own 
self-respect, which is the very fortress of all sound 
good character. But when either a child or a grown 
person really thinks well of himself — not proudly or 
vainly, but well — there is fair hope that he will live 
up to that standard of goodness. 

Treat children from the very first with truth and 
candor. The extremely common habit of laughing at 
trickery in children is degrading. It may be well 
enough to amuse ourselves with the animal-like antics 




596 DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

of cats and dogs, but to place little children on a 
level with these, is contemptible. An act that would 
deserve punishment in a child of twelve is not excus¬ 
able, much less laughable, in a child of three. 

Above all things be patient with children, that they 
may learn what patience is. The American people 
are very active, and a great fault with them is impa¬ 
tience. They forget that the tree that furnishes us the 
best grained timber is not of the most rapid growth. 
Things of genuine merit and stability come to perfec¬ 
tion slowly. A perfect manhood or womanhood is 
the fruit of a lifetime of patient self-culture. Impa¬ 
tience leads to much vice. People are too impatient 
to wait for solid and eternal pleasure, but snatch at 
the pleasures of sin, which are but for a season. 
These resemble children who cannot tarry till the 
grapes are ripe, and therefore eat them sour and green. 
One of the finest lessons for child or man is that in 
the sage advice, “ Learn to labor and to wait.” 

Kindness should characterize the earliest care of 
the young. Children are influenced by the expres¬ 
sions of the face, and they learn the features of 
passion long before they learn any other part of its 
language. Their imitative faculties are so active, 
and their sympathies so acute, that they uncon¬ 
sciously assume the expression of face which they 
are accustomed to see and Teel. Hence the impor¬ 
tance that children be habituated to kindness, beauty 
and mentality, in those with whom they are domesti¬ 
cated. Even their playthings and pictures should 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 


597 


be free from depraved meaning and violent expres¬ 
sion, if we wish them to be lovely; and all the 
hideous, grotesque, and ludicrous pictures which 
now vulgarize the public mind should be excluded 
from the young. Thus may pure and virtuous 
tastes be implanted. 

At a later period, when the child’s mind is more 
mature, and he is ready for it, send him to school. 
Give him, if you can, the best advantages the country 
affords in the way of schools, books, teachers, com¬ 
panions, and other educating influences. Train him 
now to think, to deal in abstractions, as well as in 
concrete things. Without this power he is only half 
educated. He cannot always have before him the 
objects about which it is necessary that he should 
think. Teach him to gather the thoughts of other 
men . from their words, written and spoken. In these 
days, nearly all our knowledge is gained from books, 
and he who cannot profit by these means of instruction 
is mentally a cripple. And, besides, books will be to 
him not only a means of gaining material for his work 
in life, but also one of the greatest sources of pleasure 
that he could possibly have. No one who has not 
experienced it can appreciate the delightfulness of 
reading and study. It is scarcely less than crime 
for a parent to willfully deprive his son or daughter 
of this endless source of pure enjoyment. 

Teach him also to know and to love the beautiful. 
Love of beauty has already been spoken of as one 
of the crowning graces of the mind (page 267). It 


59§ DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

may be cultivated in various ways, but principally by 
making the child’s surroundings beautiful. Trees, 
flowers, books, pictures, music, yards neatly laid off, 
houses kept clean and orderly. These are a few of 
the many items which will contribute to make home 
a charming place, and to form in the youthful mind 
that love and instinctive recognition of beauty which 
is so valuable as an elevating influence, and in • the 
prosaic matter of money-making, as well. Those who 
have much speaking or writing to do, as for example, 
lawyers, ministers, and editors, will produce much 
greater results if they are able to clothe their thoughts 
in robes of beauty. The chief reason why things made 
in France command higher prices than those made 
anywhere else, is that the French possess an exquisite 
taste, and their manufactures have acquired a world¬ 
wide reputation for beauty. One of the elements of 
A. T. Stewart’s great success as a merchant was the 
excellent taste which enabled him to display his stock 
in the most attractive ways. Pullman, of palace-car 
fame, has made an immense fortune out of his love 
of beauty, and is continually piling up more wealth. 
One of his most interesting experiments is that of 
building a city and making it entirely beautiful. He 
seems to be succeeding marvelously, and his town 
of Pullman, a few miles from Chicago, is one of the 
pleasantest and most profitable places that a tourist in 
America can visit. 

Besides mental and physical power, it is necessary 
that a man should have right habits and right 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 


599 


principles to govern him in the use of that power. 
There is no sadder sight than that of a man who is 
brilliantly endowed with strength of mind and body, 
but who, if governed at all, is governed by loose, 
immoral principles. He dashes through the world 
like an unbridled steed, trampling under foot every¬ 
thing that comes in his way, and finally kills himself 
by the excess of his mad exertions. The perfect 
man must be not only strong, but right in the use 
of his strength. His powers must be under full 
control of high moral principles. His habits ought 
to be such that right doing is natural for him, and 
does not require special attention. It is then per¬ 
haps the highest duty which a man owes to his 
child, to cultivate in him such principles and habits 
as will render the powers he may have useful to 
himself and to the world. He should be carefully 
guarded against all temptations to wrong doing, 
whether great or small. The little transgression of 
the laws of rieht is almost as bad in its effects as 
the great one. It blunts the sense of right and 
wrong, and renders him each time less sensible to 
the moral quality of an action. Against all tempta¬ 
tions he should be guarded, until his mind and his 
principles of action are grown firm enough to keep 
him in the right path. But merely to keep him 
from the wrong is not enough, he should also be 
vigorously trained in the right, by both precept and 
example. 

Guard the children from evil company in all 


t 




6oo 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


directions. Many a young person just arriving at the 
age of maturity has had a whole after life poisoned 
by a few weeks or months in the company of low- 
minded “hired help” in the family. 

One of the most important habits to be cultivated 
it that of industry. Without regular, systematic 
habits of labor, a man can accomplish but little, 
even though he be most richly gifted with natural 
power. His mind will be like the soil of a tropical 
land; under the quickening heat of impulse it may 
produce the rarest and most beautiful plants; ferns 
and flowers of the richest hues may shoot up in 
wonderful profusion ; but until it is subdued by the 
hand of industry, its fertility is of little value to the 
world. A great orator once said that the only genius 
he possessed was the genius for labor; and truly it 
was a genius to be prized; without it no other genius 
could have made him what he was. “ Persevering 
mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably 
more useful than talented inconstancy.” Spasmodic 
efforts have never been the producers of great results. 
The great inventions, the mighty thoughts, the thril¬ 
ling orations, the wonderful books of the world have 
all been wrought out by long, patient, laborious study. 
The greatest generals have been those who labored 
most constantly and most systematically upon the 
plans of their campaigns. The greatest fortunes 
have not been the result of flashes of financial genius, 
but of systematic labor and habitual economy, united 
with an intelligent study of the principles underlying 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 


601 


the business in which each man was engaged. The 
parent can be under no obligation much greater than 
that of cultivating in his child the ability to labor 
constantly and earnestly, and a habit of doing so. 
This may be done by encouraging him to perform 
all his childish tasks promptly and well, never leaving 
anything half done. 

There is one branch of education in particular, 
which deserves particular mention, and that is, the 
training of the young for some especial field of labor 
in life. Our young people are not enough impressed 
with the idea that the world does not owe them a 
living, and that they must earn it. If a life of ease 
and comparative idleness were offered, too many would 
be weak enough to accept it, and foolishly call it good 
fortune. 

The American people are not a lazy people. Quite 
the contrary. But when we hear such and such a 
person spoken of as a very active, wide-awake young 
man, in what direction is his activity showing itself? 
Is he guided by the conviction that he has an earnest, 
sober and important mission to fill in life ? Is his 
usefulness crippled by the notion that only certain 
kinds of work are worthy of his services? He has 
energy and activity, but does he really know how to 
do any one thing in an excellent manner? There is 
the rub. 

See to it, parents, that you do not turn out of your 
homes upon the world a lot of almost useless young 
men. Society is weakened constantly and sorely by 


602 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


the abundance of willing but unskilled labor; men 
would naturally rather work than steal, if their services 
were marketable. But when a man has no trade or 
profession of which he is master, he is not in the best 
condition to support himself in a perfectly honorable 
manner. 

One of the most melancholy features of modern 
American civilization is its product of evil, dawdling, 
sickly, useless girls, who, schooled in fashion, flirta¬ 
tion, and etiquette, and adorned with paint and 
ribbons and trinkets, are designed to be married — 
just as furniture is designed to sell. 

After the preliminary cap-setting and coquetting, 
helped forward by parents who are glad to be 
delivered of a burden, some luckless wight, beguiled 
by tinsel and captivated by craft, is induced to take 
one of these creatures for better or for worse — 
he hopes it will be for better, he finds out it is 
for worse. A wife, but not a woman, she knows 
nothing that she needs to know, and can do nothing 
that she ought to do. He returns from a day of 
toil, to find a half-cooked supper, and an ill-kept 
house, and a pouting “ baby ” ready to cry for a 
new bonnet or to sigh because she is lonely and 
neglected. Her whole life’s training has unfitted 
her for her place. Her painting may be fearful, 
her embroidery wonderful, and her music terrible; 
but her bread is indigestible, and her beds are not 
half made. Supplies of provisions, purchased by his 
labor, are wasted or spoiled through her ignorance 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 603 

and incompetence, and the poor fool who married 
in haste repents at his leisure, as he finds that he 
has taken to himself not only a useless wife, but 
one who, with the aid of a housekeeper can throw 
away more with a spoon than he can gather up 
with a shovel. Or, perchance, shrinking from the 
herculean labor of providing for her to waste, he 
gives up the romantic dream of a quiet, happy 
home, and gets hustled into a boarding-house, where 
short rations, bad bread, saucy servants, exacting 
proprietors, high prices, and general discomfort, leave 
him with a light pocket, heavy heart, small enjoy¬ 
ment, and general discontent. 

A worthless girl, next to a worthless boy, is one 
of the most worthless of worthless things, and many 
of them are in the market to-day, and many are the 
poor fellows waiting to be made wiser and more 
miserable by them. 

It is a positive disgrace to any girl to marry a man 
when unfitted for the duties of domestic life. It is as 
much a shame as for a dunce to open an academy, 
a landsman to undertake to command a ship, or a 
cobbler to try to build a cathedral. It is taking an 
important position when unable to properly perform 
its duties, and betraying the trust of those who confide 
in the judgment of an incompetent and an imposter. 

“ I will,” says the great apostle, “that the younger 
women marry, bear children, guide the house , give none 
occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.” 
I. Tim. v. 14. This is the divine plan, and no man can 


6 c>4 duties of parents and children. 

devise one better adapted to the general necessities 
of humanity. All efforts to substitute man’s folly for 
God’s wisdom end in confusion and disaster. And if 
a woman is to “ guide the house,” she must of necessity 
understand the things which pertain to its direction, 
and the duties which its guidance involves. And 
though every woman is not called to be a kitchen 
drudge, any more than every man is required to be 
a president or a senator, yet, however exalted her 
station, or however elevated her tastes and pursuits, 
she may be called upon to instruct, advise, and some¬ 
times to act, and that under circumstances where upon 
her skill and tact may hang the question of comfort 
or misery, of health or sickness, and perhaps of life 
or death. 

Any girl, except a natural born or thoroughly 
brought-up fool, must know that in entering upon 
married life there are new duties and responsibilities 
before her,— mental, social, and physical; and to 
undertake to perform these without reflection and 
preparation is t6 court a life of discontent and misery 
and seek an early grave, over which the disconsolate 
husband will simply shed the customary tears of early 
widowerhood and then find for himself a new wife, one 
that knows something, can do something, and is good 
for something. 

And it is a burning shame to any mother to bring 
up her daughter by her side for a score of years, 
and through pride, or carelessness, or laziness, send 
her forth without a full knowledge of the arts, the 



EDUCATING THE HEART. 605 

• 

duties, and economies of common housewifery, to 
impose upon some inexperienced youth who is taken 
in with glittering accomplishments, and led into life¬ 
long trouble, like a dunce to the correction of the 
whipping post. It is an imposition on a husband 
and a disgrace to a mother. It is worse than it would 
be if a mechanic, with full knowledge of the fact, 
should sell a worthless plow, or cart, or wagon; it 
is worse than for a builder to build a worthless house, 
or an unseaworthy vessel; all right-minded people 
should look with reproving glance upon such a 
person, and say, “ There is a woman who imposed 

1 

upon an honest man by giving him, when he sought a 
wife and a helper, a silly, dawdling, useless girl, who 
knew no more about the duties of her station than 
a Hottentot knows about the science of astronomy.” 

To do this is a shame, yea, more, it is a sin ! And 

if the domestic infidelity, the lack of natural affection, 

« 

the scarcity of happy homes, the prevalence of unlaw¬ 
ful intimacies, adulteries and divorces, and the curse 
of wretched, ill-begotten, and ill-trained children, with 
all the misery, jargon, and the trouble that fill this 
world, and roll their tide of darkness on to judg¬ 
ment and to death, were analyzed and traced to their 
primal sources, no small proportion of them would 
be laid at the door of neglectful mothers and their 
worthless girls, whose introduction into family life 
saps the foundation of domestic peace and comfort, 
and taints the whole fabric with misery and perdi¬ 
tion. Parents, have you any useless girls? 


6 o6 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


Another of the valuable habits to be inculcated, 
is that of perseverance. The youth should be taught 
never to desert a thing he has undertaken until he 
has completely accomplished it or conclusively proven 
its impossibility. When Mr. Gladstone, prime min¬ 
ister of England, and one of the greatest statesmen, 
as well as one of the greatest scholars, of his age, 
was a boy, his father took great pains to instill into 
him this habit of perseverance, and also that of 
thoughtful attention. 

The trouble he took to convince people of things 
which often did not seem worth a dispute, were among 
the noticeable traits of his character; but this fondness 
for reasoning had been purposely fostered in him by 
his father. Mr. John Gladstone liked that his children 
should exercise their judgment by stating the why and 
wherefore of every opinion they offered, and a college 
friend of William’s who went on a visit to Fasque, in 
Kincardineshire, during the summer of 1829, furnishes 
amusing particulars of the family customs in that 
house, “where the children and their parents argued 
upon everything.” They would debate as to whether 
the trout should be boiled or broiled, whether a 
window should be opened, and whether it was likely 
to be fine or wet next day. It was all perfectly good- 
humored, but curious to a stranger, because of the 
evident care which all the disputants took to advance 
no proposition, even as to the prospect of rain, rashly. 
One day Thomas Gladstone knocked down a wasp 
with his handkerchief and was about to crush it on the 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 6 oj 

table, when the father started the question as to 
whether he had the right to kill the insect; and this 
point was discussed with as much seriousness as if a 
human life had been at stake. At last it was adjudged 
that the wasp deserved death because he was a tres¬ 
passer in the drawing-room, and a common enemy 
and a danger there. 

On another occasion, William Gladstone and his 
sister Mary, disputed as to where a certain picture 
ought to be hung. An old Scotch servant came in 
with a ladder and stood irresolute while the argument 
progressed; but as Miss Mary would not yield, 
William gallantly ceased from speech, though uncon¬ 
vinced, of course. The servant then hung up the 
picture where the young lady ordered; but when he 
had done this, he crossed the room and hammered a 
nail into the opposite wall. He was asked why he 
did this: “ Aweel, Miss, that’ll do to hang the picture 
on when ye’ll have come roond to Master Willie’s 
opeenion.” 

The family generally did come round to William’s 
opinion, for the resources of his tongue-fencing were 
wonderful, and his father, who admired a clever feint 
as much as a straight thrust, never failed to encour¬ 
age him by saying: “Hear, hear; well said, well put, 
Willie!”—if the young debater bore himself well in 
an encounter. Another thing which Mr. John Glad¬ 
stone taught his children, was to accomplish to the 
end whatever they might begin, no matter how 
insignificant the undertaking might be. Assuming 



s 

608 DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

that the enterprise had been commenced with a 
deliberate, thoughtful purpose it would obviously be 
weakness to abandon it, whereas if it had been 
entered upon without thought it would be useful to 
carry it through as a lesson against acting without 
reflection. The tenacity with which William Glad¬ 
stone adhered to this principle exercised, no doubt, 
a beneficial moral discipline upon himself, but was 
frequently very trying to his companions. “ At 

Fasque,” says his friend, “we often had archery 

practice, and the arrows that went wide of the 

targets would get lost in the long grass. Most* of 
us would have liked to collect only the arrows that 
we could find without trouble, and then begin shoot- 
ing again; but this was not William’s way. He 
would insist that all the arrows should be found 
before we shot our second volleys, and would 
marshal us in Indian file and make us tramp about 
in the grass till every quiver had been refilled. 

Once we were so long in hunting for a particular 
arrow that dusk came on and we had to relinquish 
the search. The next morning, as I was dressing, 

I saw through my window William ranging the field 
and prodding into every tuft of grass with a stick. 
He had been busy in this way for two hours-, and 
at length he found the arrow just before breakfast. 

I remarked that he had wasted a good deal of time: 
Wes, and no,’ he said. ‘I was certain the arrow 
could be found if I looked for it in a certain way, 
but it was the longest way, and I failed several 

4 

% 


\ 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 609 

times by trying shorter methods. When I set to 
work in the proper fashion, I succeeded.’ ‘ Well 
done, Willie! ’ concurred his always appreciative 
father.” 

It was the same at Oxford. Gladstone would 

start for a walk to some place eight miles distant, 
and make up his mind to go “ at least more than 
half the way.” Rain might fall in torrents (a seri¬ 
ous matter in those days when no undergraduate 
ever carried an umbrella), but this would not shake 
him from his purpose ; so long as he had not 
passed his fourth mile-post nothing would make him 
turn' back. Directed toward higher objects, this 
stubbornness could be dignified with the name of 
perseverance, and it was a master quality that kept 
all Gladstone’s friends in subjection to him more or 
less. Those who would not give in to him from 
reason, would do so to avoid a contest — this being 
a world in which there are more earthen pots than 
iron ones, and the earthen try to escape collisions 
when they can. Besides, Gladstones intense con¬ 
viction of being always in the right, gave him an 
assured superiority over young men who did not 
ponder very deeply over their opinions and were 
not prepared to defend them against vigorous 
onslaughts. “ Gladstone seems to do all the think¬ 
ing for us,” Frederick Rogers once said; “the only 
trouble is that when he starts some new idea, he 
expects you to see all its beauties at once as 
clearly as he does after studying them.” Years 
39 



6 io 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


✓ 


afterward, when Mr. Gladstone had become Prime 
Minister, another old college friend observed : “ You 
must know Gladstone to understand how much it 
costs him to give up any clause in a bill which he 
has framed. He hates compromise as a concession 
of good to evil. He cannot acknowledge half-truths 
or admit the value of half-good. What grieves him 
is, not the humiliation of being beaten by his sys¬ 
tematic foes, but the misery of having failed to 
convince those who profess to be his friends- and 
to let themselves be guided by him ; and again 
when he surrenders a particle of what he considers 
right, he is at war with his restive conscience, ask¬ 
ing himself whether he was morally justified in 
yielding to serve party ends.” 

Honesty is a trait of character which should be 
assiduously cultivated in children. Teach them to be 
always fair and upright in their dealings with their 
playmates, and everybody else with whom they are 
brought into contact. Never allow them to cheat in 
their games; it is laying the foundation for deceit in 
weightier matters of after-life. Encourage them to be 
frank and manly in confessing their share in any of the 
escapades that children are so apt to engage in. Show 
them that it is better to undergo punishment, if that 
should be the result of their straightforwardness, than 
to escape it by lying. Show them that dishonesty is 
low and cowardly, while honesty is brave and noble. 

Carefulness is a quality closely allied to honesty, if, 
indeed, it is not identical with it, and it should receive 


EDUCATING THE HEART. 


6l I 


the same attention. The man who does his work 
in a slipshod manner is dishonest ; he is cheating - 
his employer, or the consumer of his goods, as the case 
may be. The child should be required to do all his 
work carefully and accurately. The habit of pains¬ 
taking is one of the easiest to acquire with proper 
training, and it should not be neglected. 

A powerful auxiliary in training a child may be 
found in his associations. When he can be led to 
select his companions among children whose tendencies 
are good, a long step has already been taken toward 
making a good man of him. On the other hand, 
it is hard indeed to make anything out of one who 
habitually and from choice mingles with those whose 
tendencies are toward evil things. The utmost care 
should, then, be taken in directing the boy or girl into 
the best society obtainable. 



Respect 


UTUAL 


A duty which parents and children owe to each 
other is that of mutual respect. It is painful to 


hear a child speak of his father as “ Dad,” “ Pap,” 


“The Guv’ner,” or “The Old Man,” or to hear 
him call his mother by the not very euphonious 
titles of “Mam,” or “The Old Woman.” A child 
ought to venerate his father and mother. One of 
the most beautiful features in the character of the 
excellent, but much-maligned Thomas Carlyle, was 
the deep love and thorough respect which he bore 


6 l2 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


his poor old father and mother. To him, none of 
the great men with whom he associated, could 

equal his own father working in his field in home- 
spun frock, or building with honest care the bridge 
of which he tells in his “ Reminiscences.” No 
woman was so fair to him as the mother who was 
always worrying lest her Thomas might not be a 
good Christian. The person who does not think 

his father brave and talented, and his mother good 
and beautiful, is to be pitied. The child ought 
always to be ready to show his affection and rev¬ 
erence for those who gave him birth by yielding 
to them, and striving to gratify all their wishes, 
and when they are old and need to lean upon 

him, he should carefully and reverently support their 
declining years. On the other hand, it is almost 

as bad for the parent to have no respect for the 
feelings and wishes of his child. And the parent 
who allows his child no liberty, but keeps him 
constantly engaged in the gratification of his own 
whims, regardless of what the child’s plans and 

desires may be, is as brutal as the child who fails 

in the respect due to his father and mother. The 
parent should have respect enough for and con¬ 
fidence enough in, his child, to allow him to follow 

his own inclinations in non-essential matters. Petty 
tyranny is entirely out of place in the family circle ; 
there, as in the political government, the proper 
amount of active rule is the least amount that will 
answer the purposes. A man must be capable of 


MUTUAL RESPECT. 


613 

self-government ; otherwise certainly he is not fit to 
exercise his right as a voter. The proper time for 
him to acquire this ability to govern himself is 
during the years of his youth, and the only known 
method of learning anything thoroughly is practice; 
therefore the child ought properly to be allowed to 
govern himself as much as possible. 

SlSCIPLINE. 

One of the most vexed questions with which the 
parent has to do, is that of discipline. As the 
citizen is subject to his government and must obey 
it, the child, who is an embryo citizen, should be 
trained in obedience. It certainly is the parent’s 
duty to enforce obedience to all commands. Unjust 
or trivial commands should not be given; only such 
orders should be issued as mean something and 
have a solid basis of reason, and to those, com¬ 
plete submission should be required. The parent 
who is constantly telling his children to do this, 
that, or the other thing, and then not compelling 
obedience, is giving them a very bad education. 
It is his duty to be firm, but not rough; as has 
been said before, firmness is perfectly compatible 
with gentleness. The child should know that his 
parent will not make any unreasonable demands, 
but that whenever one is made, it is as absolute as 
the laws of the Medes and Persians, and must be 
complied with. But in the course of events it often 


614 DUTIES TO PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 

happens that a square issue arises between parent 
and child; now whose will is to be supreme ? The 
parent’s, of course. But how is he to make it 
supreme? By persuasion, if possible; by force, if 
necessary. I cannot but believe that some of the 
humanitarians (to whom be all praise for the good 
they have done) go too far in their opposition to 
punishment. However gentle and mild we may be, 
however averse to harsh measures, there must be at 
the bottom of it all a good foundation of force. 
It is the same with individuals as with nations. 
Whoever cannot protect himself and maintain his 
rights, is apt to be imposed upon whenever it suits 
anybody’s convenience to make him the object of 
imposition. The child must understand that the 
parent has all the force necessary for use in any 
emergency. And if necessary, let him feel that 
force, until he fully realizes its presence. A recent 
writer makes an excellent suggestion on this point. 
He says: “ Hold a child sometimes by main force. 
This may give the idea of a resistless force without 
any of the cruelty of blows, or the fierceness of 
passion.” 

Proper punishment, properly administered, is the 
most convincing proof the child can have of the 
parent’s power and love. “ For, whom the Lord loveth 
he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he 
receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with 
you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father 
chasteneth not?” Punishment should be administered 


DISCIPLINE. 


615 

in kindness and not in anger. It should be sufficient 
to induce full submission, no more and no less. Thus 
used, it may become the instrument of very great 
good, and in after years the parent will receive the 
blessings of the child for the very pain inflicted. The 
pain which may be likened to that caused by the thorns 
of a hedge-row, which drive back the tender lambs, 
and thus protect them from the dangers that lurk 
without. 


JBotual Hove and Kindness. 

The final duty, the one which, in its highest degree, 
includes all the others, is mutual love and kindness. 
This is the spirit which should pervade the home and 
rule all the actions of its inmates. Children should be 
made to feel that they are not intruders in the house, 
that they are welcome there. They should be allowed 
to romp and play and have a fine time occasionally, 
even if it costs a little trouble. It is their nature, and 
the source of their greatest happiness. Their noise is 
annoying sometimes, but they will get quiet and sober 
soon enough. Look kindly then upon their childish 
sports; do not scold them for the confusion they 
cause; take part in their games when you can ; it will 
cheer and encourage them more than you know. 
Sympathize with them when in trouble and soothe 
them when in pain. Let them see that you take more 
interest in them and love them better than anybody 
else. Be ready to help them in their innocent little 


6 i6 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


projects, encourage their feeble attempts to do things 
for themselves. Remember it was his mothers kiss 
that led Benjamin West on and made him a great 
painter. Do not occupy their whole time in your 
service. Let them have leisure for their own amuse¬ 
ments and studies. Let them have, if at all possible, a 
room for themselves, where they may be sovereign, 
and reign with absolute sway over their little king¬ 
dom of dolls, hobby-horses, whistles, and dishes; and 
whither, a few years later, they may retire to think» 
in seclusion. Perhaps the greatest benefit received 
by young men who go away to college, is not the 
instruction of their teachers, but the opportunity of 
having a room to themselves, where they can be alone 
with their own thoughts whenever it may best suit 
them. 

Look at the man who has made one fortune but 
does not consider it large enough, and is now busy 
making another. He is off to work at eight A. M., 
never returning tin eight P. M., and then so worn and 
jaded that he cares for nothing beyond his dinner and 
his sleep. His beautiful house and pleasure-grounds 
give him no delights ; he never enjoys, he only pays 
for them. He has a charming wife and a youthful 

family, but he sees little of either — the latter, indeed, 

* 

he never sees at all except on Sundays. He comes 
home so tired that the children would only worry him. 
To them “papa” is almost a stranger. They know 
him only as a periodical encumbrance on the home- 
life, which generally makes it much less pleasant. And 


MUTUAL LOVE AND KINDNESS. 6 1 7 

when they grow up, it is to an existence so totally 
different from his that they usually quietly ignore him. 
“ Oh! papa cares nothing about this. No, no; we 
never think of telling papa anything.” Until some day 
papa will die and leave them a quarter of a million. 
But how much better to leave them what no money can 
buy — the remembrance of a father! A real father, 
whose guardianship made home safe; whose tenderness 
filled it with happiness ; who was companion and friend 
as well as ruler and guide ; whose influence penetrated 
every day of their lives, every feeling of their hearts; 
who was the pattern, the examplar, the originator and 
educator of everything good in them ; the visible father 
on earth, who made them understand dimly “ Our 
Father, who art in heaven.” 

Your life is crowded with duties and labors (and 
whose is not ?), but you can surely find an hour, or 
a half hour, at least, somewhere in the day, which you 
can give to your family, when your children can feel 
free to climb up into your arms and frolic as gaily 
as they please. Try it and thus not only endear your¬ 
self to your little ones, but also bring back into your 
own soul the dewy freshness of childhood. You will 
find it a veritable elixir of youth. How beautiful was 
the family custom embalmed by Longfellow in his 
“ Children’s Hour!” 

“Between the dark and the daylight, 

When the night is beginning to lower, 

Comes a pause in the day’s occupations, 

That is known as the children’s hour. 



6 i8 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


“ I heai in the chamber above me 
The patter of little feet, 

The sound of a door that is opened, 

And voices soft and sweet. 

“From my study I see in the lamplight, 
Descending the broad hall stair,— 
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, 

And Edith with golden hair. 

“ A whisper, and then a silence : 

Yet I know by their merry eyes 
They are plotting and planning together 
To take me by surprise. 

“A sudden rush from the stairway, 

A sudden raid from the hall! 

By three doors left unguarded 
They enter my castle wall ! 

They climb up into my turret 

O’er the arms and back of my chair; 
If I try to escape, they surround me ; 
They seem to be everywhere. 

“ They almost devour me with kisses, 
Their arms about me entwine, 

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine! 

“ Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti, 
Because you have scaled the wall, 
Such an old mustache as I am 
Is not a match for you all ? 

“ I have you fast in my fortress, 

And will not let you depart, 

But put you down in the dungeon 
In the round-tower of my heart. 


MUTUAL LOVE AND KINDNESS. 619 

“ And there will I keep you forever, 

Yes, forever and a day, 

Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, 

And molder in dust away! ” 

These principles being duly observed, the highest 
pleasure can be obtained from the parental relation, 
and we shall have also the satisfaction of seeingr 
our children grow up to the richest manhood and 
womanhood. And surely our labors will not be in 
vain, for the time will soon come when our greatest 
joy will be the hearty love and respect which dutiful 
children so happily render to their aged relatives. 
Many an old person has had his path to the grave 
cleared and lightened by the kind attentions of the 
young. Longfellow never tired of the society of 
children; many of his finest poems were written in 
their honor. Goethe, bereft of nearly all old friends, 
found solace in the loving companionship of his 
daughter-in-law, Ottilie, who, in the words of his 
biographer, “ devoted herself to cheer his solitude,” 
reading aloud to him from the ever interesting pages 
of his favorite books. > 

The children of to-day will carry into the distant 
future just such pictures of us as we now have 
of our own early experiences. We remember our 
parents for the real common sense service they did 
us when we were children, and for the purity of 
their hearts, and their genuine love for us. It is 
not the wealthy homes and extended possessions of 
our father’s, or the fine fashionable clothing of our 


620 


DUTIES OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 


mother’s, that clings to our dearest memories of 
childhood ! 

Thank God, some of us had an old-fashioned 
mother. Not a woman of the period, enameled and 
painted, with her great chignon, her cuffs and bustle, 
whose white, jeweled hand never felt the clasp of 
baby fingers* but a dear old-fashioned, sweet-voiced 
mother, with eyes in whose clear depth the love- 
light shone, and brown hair, just threaded with silver, 
lying smooth upon her faded cheek. These dear 
old hands, worn with toil, gently guiding our tottered 
steps in sickness; even reaching out in yearning 
tenderness to when her sweet spirit was baptized 
in the early spray of the river. Blessed is the 
memory of an old-fashioned mother. It floats to 
us now like the beautiful perfume from woodland 
blossoms. The music of other voices may be lost, 
but the entrancing memory of hers echoes to our 
soul forever. 

Other faces may fade and be forgotten, but hers 
shall shine on until the light from heaven’s portals 
will glorify our own. When the fitful pauses of 
busy feet wander back to the old homestead and 
cross the well-worn threshold, stand once more in 
the low, quaint room, so hallowed by her presence, 
how the feeling of childish innocence and depend¬ 
ence comes over us, and we kneel down in the 
molten sunshine streaming in at the window — just 
where long years ago we knelt down by our mother’s 
knee, lisping “ Our Father.” 




(& © E T IH1 E AW© ©TTDLDE 






















































































































































































MUTUAL LOVE AND KINDNESS. 


621 


How many times, when the tempter lures us on, 
has the memory of that sacred hour, that mother’s 
words — her prayers — saved us from plunging into 
the deep abyss of sin. Years have filled great 
drifts between her and us, but they may not have 
hidden from our sight the glory of pure, unselfish 
love. Parents, yours is a grand responsibility! 




















FORBEARANCE AND KINDNESS. 


LOSELY connected as they are, differ¬ 
ences of opinion and interest must of 
necessity often occur, and to soften the 
harsh feelings which are liable to be pro¬ 
duced by such occurrences, there is need 
of a great fund of patience and love. 
Quarreling among members of the same 
family is one of the most disgusting 
sights by which our eyes are ever pained, 
and it is at the same time one entirely 
too frequent. Where all ought to show 
sweetness and harmony, it is a shame 
to see bitterness, discord, and constant 
wrangling. Brothers and sisters ought 
always to be ready to overlook and pardon the 
little offenses which they receive from one another. 
They are the result, not of malice and hatred, but 
of thoughtlessness; and it is foolish to be angered 
by them. Besides their readiness to forgive injuries 
they should seek opportunities of obliging and accom¬ 
modating one another. Opportunities occur almost 

every hour for each to do something that will make 

* 

the others happier, and they should be improved. 




























FORBEARANCE AND KINDNESS. 623 

Brothers and sisters should exercise a watchful care, 
and be always ready to give honest advice upon sub¬ 
jects that concern the welfare of one another. How 
beautiful is the home where the spirit of self-denial 
and helpfulness is the ruling spirit. People reared 
in such homes are not the ones who fill our prisons 
and alms-houses; they are the best of every com¬ 
munity ; their youthful training has formed them into 
happy, peace-loving citizens. 

feovE and Unity. 

There is something transcendently virtuoirs in the 
affection of a high-hearted brother toward his gentle, 
amiable sister. He can feel unbounded admiration 
for her beauty — he can appreciate and applaud the 
kindness which she bestows on himself — he can 
press her bright lips and her fair forehead, and 
still feel that she is unpolluted; he can watch the 
blush steal over her features with pleasure when he 
tells her of her innocent follies, and he can clasp 
her to his bosom in consolation when the tears 
gush from her overloaded heart. With woman there 
is always a feeling of pride mingled with the regard 
which she has for her brother. She looks upon him 
as one fitted to brave the tempest of the world, as 
one to whose arm of protection she can fly for 
shelter when she is stricken by sorrow, wronged, or 
oppressed, as one whose honor is connected with 
her own, and who durst not see her insulted with 




624 DUTIES OF BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 

impunity. He is to her as the oak is to the vine, 
and, though she may fear all others of mankind, 
she is secure and confident in the love and counte¬ 
nance of her brother. 

No purer feeling is ever kindled upon the altar of 

human affection, than a sister’s pure, uncontaminated 

* 

love for her brother. It is unlike all other affection ; 
so disconnected with selfish sensuality; so feminine 
in its development, so dignified, and yet, withal, so 
fond, so devoted. Nothing can alter it, nothing can 
suppress it. The world may revolve, and its revolu¬ 
tion effect changes in the fortunes, in the character, 
and in the disposition of her brother; yet if he wants, 
whose hand will so readily stretch out to supply him 
as a sister’s ? And if his character is maligned, whose 
voice will so readily swell in his advocacy? Next to 
a mother’s unquenchable love, a sister’s is pre-eminent. 
It rests so exclusively on the tie of consanguinity for 
its sustenance; it is so wholly divested of passion, 
and springs from such a deep recess in the human 
bosom, that when a sister once fondly and deeply 
regards her brother, that affection is blended with 
her existence, and the lamp that nourishes it expires 
only with that existence. In all the annals of crime, 
it is considered anomalous to find the hand of a 
sister raised in anger against her brother, or her 
heart nurturing the seeds of hatred, envy, or revenge 
in regard to that brother. 


Iuties of Rasters and Servants. 


HE relation of master and servant has 
been one of the most troublesome from 
the earliest times. Many systems of labor 
have prevailed in different periods of the 
world’s history, and as many different views 
of the reciprocal duties of masters and 
servants have been held. The system of 
absolute slavery having been abolished in 
most civilized countries, the duties applying 
to that system need not now be discussed. The 
method of procuring labor to be done, now in vogue 
throughput the world, is that of hiring people to do 
it at fixed rates; and it is a method that is by no 
means free from difficulties and annoyances, and the 
troubles which surround it seem to be growing rather 
than diminishing. As Carlyle has said: “Obedience 
cannot be bought with money. Without real masters 
you cannot have servants ; and a master is not 
made by thirty pieces or thirty million pieces of 
silver; only a sham master is so made.” But 
obedience is a thing which lies at the very basis 
of all systems of labor. 

Genuine obedience can come only from those 

persons who do not want a living in this world 
40 625 























626 


DUTIES OF MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 


without honestly earning it, and hence are willing 
to give their faithful services for a just price ; and 
are then capable of entering into sympathy with 
the wishes of their employer, and thus, in their real 
desire to be useful, they yield him perfect obedi¬ 
ence so far as their tasks are concerned. These 
intelligent and sensible sentiments in the heart of 
the employe, when put up against the wages of the 
employer, give us the only proper master and the 
only honorable, undebased servant. 

It is necessary in all civilized society that some 
persons make plans and lay out a line of life requir¬ 
ing the aid of others. But when you offer me 
wages for my aid and, I accept them in the spirit 
of the sentiments expressed above, I am in no way 
degraded thereby. We are both elevated by our 
partnership in toil. Nothing can disgrace either but 
a dishonest failure to live up to agreements. The 
idea that a hired laborer is on that account beneath 
us, is a dirty bit of clay that still hangs to the 
garments of civilization from the days when slavery 
was common in the world. To be a slave is indeed 
debasing, and if it debases the slave, it also as 
surely works damage of some dire sort upon the 
master. The notion that hired service is not com¬ 
pletely respectable is very rapidly dying out of the 
earth, and very soon it will be customary to speak 
entirely of employer and employe ; or, if we use the 
old words, “master” and “servant,” they will be 
robbed of their old-time meaning. The troubles 


DUTIES OF MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 627 

spoken of above will all disappear when people are 
honest enough not to take improper advantages, or 
to act on the thieving principle that the world owes 
them a living before they have earned it. 

It only remains to be seen under what circum¬ 
stances the best possible results can be obtained 
from the present method of hiring labor. The 
principles of which we shall speak in this connec¬ 
tion, deserve to be regarded for two reasons: first, 
because they are right and are due from each to 
the other as from man to man; and second, because 
it is policy, as the observance of them will secure 
the best possible results from the present order of 
things. 


Respect and Kindness of Employers. 

The first duty which the employer owes to his 
employe is that of kind treatment. The poorest of 
laborers has just as much right to be kindly treated 
as the richest of capitalists, and if he is not so treated 
he will naturally feel outraged and will have no affec¬ 
tion 'for his employer, and consequently will have no 
desire to please him by working much and well. 
On the other hand, the one who deals gently and 
graciously with those whom he employs, will receive 
their gratitude, and the work which they perform for 
him will be increased in both quantity and quality. 

The second duty, of equal importance to the first 
is that of patience. A servant must necessarily 


628 


DUTIES OF MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 


make many mistakes; we make many mistakes our¬ 
selves, and it is not fair to expect them to do what 
we cannot. It is both wrong and unprofitable for 
a master to scold and threaten every time his servant 
fails to do just as he should like to have done. 
All corrections should be made in a gentle, pleasant 
way, and not as if a poorly cooked dish or a broken 
rake were an unpardonable offense. Requests should 
be made in a polite, considerate manner. It is just 
as necessary to thank servants for their services as 
to thank anyone else. Waiters soon learn to know 
who treats them with respect, and they treat him 
in the same way. If you would get efficient service 
in a public house, do not fume and fret at every 
trifling annoyance, but observe all the little courtesies 
which go to make life pleasant. When the Duke 
of Wellington was sick, the last thing he took was 
a little tea. On his servant handing it to him in a 
saucer, and asking him if he would have it, the 
Duke replied, “Yes, if you please.” These were his 
last words. If he, the victor of Waterloo, the great¬ 
est conqueror of Europe, would use such language 
to a domestic, need we feel above doing so? The 
fact is, it is always those who are ill-bred 'that are 
impolite and rude in dealing with those who serve 
them. Says Sir Arthur Helps, in one of his essays: 
“ You observe a man becoming day by day richer, 
or advancing in station, or increasing in professional 
reputation, and you set him down as a successful 
man in life. But if his home is an ill-regulated one, 


RESFECT AND KINDNESS OF EMPLOYERS. 629 

where no links of affection extend throughout the 
family, whose former domestics (and he has had 
more of them than he can well remember) look back 
upon their sojourn with him as one unblessed by 
kind words or deeds, I contend that that man has 
not been successful. Whatever good fortune he may 
have in the world, it is to be remembered that he 
has always left one important fortress untaken behind 
him.” 

Lastly, a man should furnish to his employes suit¬ 
able materials and tools for their work. A servant 
who, like Maitre Jacques, is required to prepare 
a banquet without money to buy the necessary 
materials, cannot rightly be blamed for failing. 
Furthermore, “the servant is worthy of his hire,” 
and ought to receive it promptly and fully; his 
means are usually confined to the wages of his 
daily labor, and it is a serious inconvenience to 
him, if, through the negligence or dishonesty of his 
employer, he is compelled to wait for his money. 

©BEDIENCE AND fAITHFULNESS. 

In fulfillment of his contract, and in return for 
kind treatment on the part of the employer, the 
employe owes a variety of duties. One of them is 
obedience. Unquestionably the master has a right 
to the services of any one he has employed, for so 
much time as he has paid for. And he has a right to 
use the servant in any proper way that he pleases, 


630 DUTIES OF MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 

N 

unless indeed, as is quite common, he has hired him 
to do only a certain kind of work, in which case he 
cannot claim any other kind. Unquestionably also, 
a man has a right to demand that his own work 
shall be done in any certain way that he may direct, 
and it is the servant’s duty to do it in that way, 
regardless of his own opinions ; if he is not willing 
to do this, it is his privilege to resign. 

Right here, however, a distinction is made between 
professional labor and common labor. Professional 
labor is that in which the principal ingredient is skill, 
and includes such work as that of lawyers, physi¬ 
cians, preachers, teachers, editors, public officers, and, 
in a less degree, . the various handicrafts, as black- 
smithing, carpentering, and the like. The accepted 
doctrine, indeed, is that in the case of professional 
labor, the one employed is held responsible for 
results, but is not in any way answerable for the 
methods. If I employ a physician to attend a mem¬ 
ber of my family, I am right in demanding of him 
a cure, if one is possible, but I may not in any 
manner interfere with the course of treatment. My 
only remedy is to dismiss the physician and employ 
another one, if I think the results are not entirely 
satisfactory. So, again, the patrons of a school have 
no right, under ordinary circumstances, to meddle 
with its management. If it does not correspond 
with their ideas of what a school should be, they 
may withdraw their children from it and send them 
elsewhere, and they may refuse to re-employ the 


OBEDIENCE AND FAITHFULNESS. 


teacher ; in some extraordinary cases, they may even 

take legal means to displace him before the con- 

1 \ 

tract time of •teaching expires. In like manner, the 
practice of instructing congressmen and senators, is 
a pernicious one. 

A congressman is elected because he is supposed 
to have a better knowledge of public affairs, and 
better .judgment in regard to them, than anybody 
■else that can be obtained for the office. Besides, he, 
being upon the field of action, will naturally understand 
the measures upon which he is called to vote far 
better than his constituents at home. It was a noble 
act in Macaulay, when he was a candidate for Parlia¬ 
ment, and was desired to pledge himself to a certain 
policy, to absolutely refuse to do so. Here is what 
he says, in a letter to an elector who had written to 

him on the subject: “ I wish to add a few words 

touching a question which has lately been much 
canvassed; I mean the question of pledges. In this 
letter, and in every letter which I* have written to 
my friends at Leeds, I have plainly declared my 

opinions. But I think it, at this conjuncture, my duty 
to declare that I will give no pledges. I will not 
bind myself to make or to support any particular 
motion. I will state as shortly as I can some of 
the reasons which have induced me to form this 

determination. 

“The great beauty of the representative system is 
that it unites the advantages arising from a division 
of labor. Just as a physician understands medicine 


632 DUTIES OF MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 

better than an ordinary man, just as a shoemaker 
makes shoes better than an ordinary man, so a person 
whose life is passed in transacting affairs of state 
becomes a better stateman than an ordinary man. 
In politics, as well as every other department of life, 
the public ought to have the means of checking 
those who serve it. If a man finds that he derives 
no benefit from the prescription of his physician, he 
calls in another. If his shoes do not fit him, he 
changes his shoemaker. But when he has called in 
a physician of whom he hears a good report, and 
whose general practice he believes to be judicious, 
it would be absurd in him to tie down that physician 
to order particular pills and particular draughts. 
While he continues to be the customer of a shoe¬ 
maker, it would be absurd in him to sit by and mete 
every motion of that shoemaker’s hand. And in 
the same manner, it would, I think, be absurd in 
him to require positive pledges, and to exact daily 
and hourly obedience, from his representative. My 
opinion is, that electors ought at first to choose 
cautiously, then to confide liberally; and, when the 
term for which they have selected their member 
has expired, to review his conduct equitably, and to 
pronounce on the whole taken together. 

“ If the people of Leeds think proper to repose 
in me that confidence which is necessary to the 
proper discharge of the duties of a representative, 
I hope that I shall not abuse it. If it be their 
pleasure to fetter their members by positive prom- 


OBEDIENCE AND FAITHFULNESS. 


ises, it is in their power to do so. I can only say 
that on such terms I cannot conscientiously serve 
them.” 

But in the case of common labor, the servant is 
responsible to his master for results, and also for 
methods, and he should yield absolute obedience to 
the master’s wishes about matters relating to his. 
employment. 


Honesty of Servants. 

Another duty is honesty of the employe in all his. 
dealings. Honesty does not mean simply that he 
shall not steal or cheat his master out of money and 
commodities; it means also that he shall make his. 
master’s interests his own, that he shall do his work 
as thoroughly and economically as if he were doing 
it for himself. The greatest stigma that rests upon 
those who in this country are called “hired girls,” is 
the fact that it seems to be their highest object to 
get the greatest possible wages and do the least 
possible work, and to do that little work in the 
most slip-shod manner they can without losing their 
situations. They too often have no desire to promote 
the interest of their employers; they seem to think 
that since they do not have to pay the household 
expenses, economy is a useless bother. It seems. 

i 

strange that they cannot realize that their interests 
and those of their employers are identical. A girl 
who would work honestly and neatly and without 


634 DUTIES OF MASTERS AND SERVANTS. 

useless extravagance, could, without any trouble, com¬ 
mand wages twice as high as those which the market 
has placed upon careless, slovenly, extravagant girls. 

We may very well sum up these directions for 
the securing of pleasant relations between masters 
and servants in these words from Fuller: “If thou 
art master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, some¬ 
times deaf.” Be mutually patient with each other. 








0UTIES OF fEHCRER RKD iUFIL. 


THE TEACHER’S WORK. 

ONSIDERABLE has already been said con¬ 
cerning the importance of education. Its 
utility as a happiness producer and power 
giver has been shown. But the subject is 
one that it would be somewhat difficult to 
overdo. The problem of education is the 
great practical problem of the age. It is beginning 
to be felt that the first and fundamental step toward 
a good government is a good school system. It 
was Wordsworth who called the child the father of 
the man. Look well to your children, then; it is hard 
to make good men out of bad boys. The child’s mind 
is plastic, and may be molded into almost any shape, 
for good or for evil ; the man’s is hard and fixed. The 
child is a sapling, which the slenderest thread will 
suffice to hold straight or to bend and twist; the man 
is that sapling grown older and stronger, and retaining 
to its latest day much of the form given it in its youth. 
If a child receives a cut on his arm, the scar will remain 
plainly marked through all the years of manhood and 
•old age. The mind is not less susceptible of injury, 

or less tenacious of the scar. Watch, then, that the 

685 














636 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

thread of influence may pull the young mind in the 
right direction, and that no scar may be left upon it.. 
How great is the urgency of the demand for education 
in this country may be seen from the following extract 
from Joseph Cook : 

“ Of the ten million voters in the United States, one 
in five cannot write his name. The nation is charged 
with the education of eighteen million of children 
and youth. Of these, ten million -five hundred thou¬ 
sand are enrolled in public and private schools, but the 
average attendance is only six million ; seven million 
five hundred thousand, or five-twelfths of the whole, are 
growing up in absolute ignorance of the English alpha¬ 
bet. At the present rate of increase of the number of 
children not attending school, there will in ten years 
be more children in the United States out of schools 
than in them. In all but five of the states there 
were enough illiterate voters to have reversed the 
result of the last presidential election in each of these 
states. Thirty-two per cent of the voters in the south 
are illiterate. Of these, seventy per cent are colored 
and thirty are whites. In spite of all the appliances of 
education, the increase of illiterate voters in the south 
from 1870 to 1880 was one hundred and eighty-seven 
thousand six hundred and seventv-one. In more than 
one third of the Union the ignorant voters are almost 
one third of the total number of voters. National aid 
to education is the only adequate remedy for the 
national evil of ignorance. I have come recently from 
distant lands, and I have found that many a country on 


THE TEACHER'S WORK. 


^37 


earth is much more sensitive to its illiteracy than we 
appear to be to that of our own nation. At this 
moment Greece expends more for her common schools, 
in proportion to her wealth, than we do. So does 
Japan, and the latter country has a larger proportion 
of children in school than we have. As a nation, we 
are not in advance of Prussia in expenditures for 
common schools, and even England and Scotland are 
verging close upon New England in their taxes for the 
abolition of illiteracy. The truth is that, instead of 
being, as a whole, at the front of the educational 
advance of civilization, our proud nation is gradually 
dropping into a laggard place.” 

That is an alarming condition of affairs in a country 
like ours, where the people have a larger share in 
the conduct of government than they have anywhere 
else on the globe. Illiteracy is the great danger of 
America. How can a fool make a good ruler? and yet 
the vote of the completest idiot counts just as much 
as that of an Emerson or a Bancroft, a Webster or 
a Calhoun. It is mostly the illiterates who form the 
purchasable part of our voting population. It is 
mostly the illiterates who fill our prisons. Mobs are 
generally composed of the uneducated ; very seldom 
is a riot made up of any other class. Drunkenness 
and licentiousness, though they extend to all classes 
of people, are most commonly the vices of the igno¬ 
rant, who can find no more attractive way of spending 
their time. “ One of the hugest needs of this country,” 
says Joseph Cook, in the article quoted above, “and of 


638 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND TUPIL. 

many another country, is a middle link of education 
between the best cultured and those who have ele¬ 
mentary instructions. The masses of our people very 
soon will cease to believe in highly intellectual and 
thoroughly trained men as leaders, unless there be 
high schools to lift pupils from the very bottom of 
the social scale, and educate the brightest minds into 
contact with the best educated circle. In the name 
of political necessity, and of the interests of all classes 
of people, I defend the high schools and the normal 
schools. I defend that continuity of educational insti¬ 
tutions which begins by the lowest rounds of the 
educational ladder, a round that ought to stand in 
the gutter, and lifts the worthy people of whatever 
social rank, to the upper round,* on a level as high 
as education has reached anywhere on earth.” 

In one of his late lectures Mr. Beecher used the 
following very earnest language about the impor¬ 
tance of the teachers work, and the necessity of 
thorough qualification on his part. “ I put the 
teacher higher than any profession, higher than the 
lawyer, higher than the minister, higher than the 
statesman. I tell you that the proper society is 
the bottom of it, and they that work there are the 
ones that work nearest to God. I tell you, first 
God, next mother, next teacher, next minister, if 
he is worthy of his calling. And you are bound 
to give them such dignity that self-respecting men 
and women shall be willing to adopt the business 
of teaching for life with a certainty, just the same 


THE TEACHER’S WORK. 639 

certainty, of an adequate support that the other 
liberal professions have. As it is, the common school 
is perpetually spoiled by raw material. Taking the 
country through — large cities are exceptional points — 
but taking the country through, nobody teaches 
because he means to be a teacher through life. The 

m 

young man has gone to the academy, and he wants 
to go to the seminary or college, and he steps aside 
and teaches for a winter with the hope to do some¬ 
thing else, because that is not going to be his busi¬ 
ness ; he has gone through college and he wants to 
study the liberal professions. He is a little in debt, 
and so he thinks he will teach a year in order to 
raise funds, and not because he is going to make 
teaching a business. And so woman goes into the 
common schools not to stay, but because it is a 
respectable place for her to wait until she sees what 
God is going to send her; when she finds out, she 
resigns and opens a school of her own. 

“Now, is this system best for your children — to 
keep them perpetually in the hands of raw material ? 
What if an untaught and rude sailor at the end of 
a voyage should say: i I cannot get another berth 
for six months, and I think I will practice medicine.’ 
You wouldn’t put a sick dog in his hands unless it 
was for execution. What if a man should say: 

‘ I hope for an office, and I will practice law until I 
get one.’ He never studied it and isn’t going to 
study it, but he is going to practice it. Who would 
put a piece of property, or anything he had an 




•640 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

interest in — who would place his business, in the 
hands of a man that had not studied the law a 
good many years and gathered experience and 
accumulated wisdom which comes only from study 
and experience? You demand these for property, 
for the body; you demand experience in all these 

things, but for your children anything, only so that 
it is cheap ! ‘If a man will teach for twenty- 

five dollars a month and found, he is the man 

for us, unless there is a fellow who will teach 

for twenty dollars.’ So you foist off upon the 
children the poorest, and the meanest, and 
the most miserable teachers. But this must be 
•changed ; men must cultivate this profession ; a man 
must go into it as he does into the ministry, or 
into the law, for his life work. Of all parsimony 
there is none like that of cheap schools. Endow 
the schools liberally, and give them the best teachers 
that can be obtained.” 

It is quite commonly asserted that the purpose 
of the school is to make good citizens. Looked at 
in one way, the statement is true; but it is defective. 
This is the principal source of the state’s interest 
in education, no doubt, and it is the origin of the 

common schools. But to say that the making of 

♦ 

good citizens is the prime object of education is to 
make too narrow an assertion; it does not tell the 
tenth part of the truth. What proportion of a man’s 
actions, duties, and relations spring out of the imme¬ 
diate fact of citizenship ? Does any man who is not 


THE TEACHER'S WORK. 


641 


a politician spend five days out of the three hundred 
and sixty-five in work which is peculiarly his as a 
citizen ? Of course, those who adhere to the above 
doctrine give a broader meaning than this to the 
expression, and mean by a good citizen, a man who 
is honest in his dealings, helpful as a neighbor, and 
public-spirited,— in short, a good man. But even this 
is not broad enough. Better say that the object of 
education, and consequently of schools, is to make 
men and women. A man is a far greater thing than 
is a citizen. Citizenship is only one of the many 
functions of a man. 

There is yet another source of reasonable interest 
on the part of the state in advanced education. 
Government often builds large, expensive court-houses, 
state-houses, post-offices, and other public buildings. 
They are far finer than the material necessities of 
government would justify. Why are they built so ? 
For ornament, to display the grandeur and power 
of the nation. But do fine buildings form the most 
effective ornamentation ? By no means. Man is the 
central thing in the universe. Why is it that every 
tourist in England wishes to see Westminster Abbey? 
Is it because of the architectural magnificence of the 
building? Not at all. It is because the spot is 
hallowed as the final resting place of many of the 
wisest and best Englishmen. There are Chaucer, 
Dryden, Milton, Gray, Goldsmith, Addison, Pitt, 
Fox, Chatham, and all the long line of rulers. Is 
it on account of its great natural beauty that every 
41 



642 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

visitor at Paris goes first to Pere-la-Chaise ? It is 
because there are buried the great of France,— 
the philosophers, warriors, historians, statesmen, 
poets, and musicians whose names are the glory 
of their native land. What is it that lends their 
attraction to Waterloo and Gettysburg? Why is it 
that Concord, and Weimar, and Stratford-upon-Avon 
have so much magnetism to draw the world ? 
Faneuil Hall is not the finest building in Boston, 
nor is Independence Hall the finest in Philadelphia, 
yet they are the most interesting and most visited 
places in those cities. Why ? Because there great 
deeds have been done, great men have lived, great 
history has been made. It is man that gives dignity 
to a place or country, — not nature, and not art. 
Would it not be well, then, to curtail somewhat, if 
necessary, the expenditures upon showy buildings, 
and devote the money saved to the making of men 
and women who will be a tower of strength and a 
crown of glory to the land ? 

THE TEACHER AND THE PUBLIC. 

A few words now upon the relations of teacher and 
public (a subject which does not receive enough atten¬ 
tion), and we will proceed to our proper theme, the 
reciprocal duties of teacher and pupil. 

It was mentioned (in page 630), that the teacher 
is a professional laborer, and that, therefore, he is 
responsible only for results, not for methods. The 
teacher, having the advantage of both study and expe- 


0 

THE TEACHER AND THE PUBLIC. 643, 

rience, ought to know, and does know, more about 
the proper subjects to be taught and the proper 
methods of teaching them than nine hundred and 
ninety-nine out of every thousand of his patrons, even 
in the most intelligent localities. Hence these subjects 
should be left almost entirely to his discretion. Let 
him be untrammeled in his work, give him whatever 
appliances he needs, and then hold him strictly respon¬ 
sible for the results. 

The teacher has a right to the co-operation of the 
public. The child’s mind is easily worked upon, 
especially by his parents. If at home he constantly 
hears criticisms upon the teacher and the school, he 
is put into a state of mind very unfavorable to learning 
well what the teacher has to teach. Moreover, it is 
quite essential to a successful school that the pupils 
should be regular and punctual in their attendance. 
This end can be secured by no one else so well as 
by the parent, and he should take an active and 
constant interest in it. The parent should supply the 
child with all necessary books and other equipments, 
and should urge and assist him to use them to the 
best advantage, and get from them all the good he can. 
In these days of large schools, the pupils can expect 
but little individual attention from the teacher. This 
element must be supplied almost entirely by the 
parent. 

There is too little permanency about teaching. 
Everywhere except in the larger towns there is a 
change almost every year. It is necessary that a 


644 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

teacher should get acquainted with his pupils and 
they with him, before the best results can be 
achieved. When a year’s school has been satisfactory, 
the teacher should be re-employed if he wishes it, 
and he should be informed at the close of the year 

whether his services are desired for the next. The 

/ 

common practice of putting off school elections until 
a month or so before beginning the next year, is 
pernicious. But this duty is not all upon the side 
of the public; it is as necessary that the teacher 
should be reasonably prompt in his decision as it is 
that the public should be so. If the teacher does 
not intend to remain another year, he should make 
known the fact soon enough to give time to obtain 
another in his place. The idea prevails quite exten¬ 
sively among teachers that it is right for them to 
resign their schools at any time when it may suit 
their convenience to do so. This is anything but 
honorable ; there is no reason why a teacher should 
not be as firmly bound by his promise or contract 
as any one else. 

A teacher cannot teach successfully unless he 
has the necessary appliances, and these should be 
furnished. He- should be given a good building, 
comfortably warmed, well ventilated, and well cared 
for, and there should be a full supply of the things 
which are grouped together under the head of 
apparatus, — such things as dictionaries, encyclo¬ 
pedias, maps, and implements for illustration. It 
would be well if a few days were given each year 



THE TEACHER AND THE PUBLIC. 645 

with full pay, to enable the teacher to visit other 
schools and observe their methods, and thus 
improve his own. 

A greater number of teachers should be employed 
and the schools made smaller, that each pupil may 
receive more individual attention. No two pupils 
have minds exactly alike; each has some talent 
peculiar to himself, and he should be allowed to 
develop that talent. Esculapius should not be kept 
away from his study of bones and muscles in order 
that he may make up his grade in arithmetic or 
in grammar; Hercules should not be compelled to 
mope over poetry and philosophy when he wishes 
to roam the fields and strengthen his arm for the 
twelve labors; Jason should not be compelled to 
split his head over physiology and chemistry when 
his natural inclination is to wander along the beach, 
read stories of daring adventure upon the ocean, 
and dream of the Golden Fleece; Apollo must not 
be forced to spend upon geography and history 
the time that belongs to music and poetry. It is 
wrong to put all children into • a mold and make 
them grow into exactly the same shape. That kind 
of treatment is just as barbarous when applied to 
their minds, as it would be if applied to their bodies. 
But when each teacher has charge of forty or fifty 
pupils, how can it well be otherwise? Time being 
limited, the course must be arranged for the aver- 
age pupil, and the dull one must be hurried, and 
the bright one checked, in order to fit that average. 


646 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

The jurisdiction of the teacher should be clearly 

■x 

defined by law. He should not be left in doubt as to 
where his authority and responsibility begin and where 
they end. Likewise the extent of his authority, 
whether, for example, he has the right to punish, 
and in what way, should be definitely settled. 

Finally, the teacher’s salary should be proportioned 
to the importance of his position in the social economy. 
The teacher’s work is intellectual work, and he must 
have means of cultivating his mind. Healthy instruc¬ 
tion cannot be drawn from a stagnant mind any more 
than healthy water can be drawn from a stagnant pool. 
If you would have your children fed upon sound mental 
food, you must pay your teacher well enough so 
that he may be able to buy books and pictures, to 
travel, and to cultivate himself in all ways. Besides, 
he ought not to be forced by lack of means to live in 
a manner suited only to the poorest of day-laborers. 
The mind can scarcely be clear and cheerful when the 
body is stretched upon the rack of poverty. And 
yet that is precisely the condition of, perhaps, ninety 
per cent of the teachers of America. When all these 
obligations are fulfilled by the people, then, and not 
until then, need they look for and demand the best 
results from the public school system. 

(Sharacter-Iuilding. 

We have seen that the purpose of education is to 
make men and women. The great obligation then 


CHARACTER-BUILDING. 


647 


on the teacher’s part is to do this, to give his boys 
and girls the maximum of virtue, power, and knowl¬ 
edge, to lead them as far as possible on the way to 
the high goal that has been pointed out, and to give 
them strength and light for the remainder of the 
journey. He must use the most effective means, as 
he with his best intelligence may see it, to make com¬ 
plete physical, intellectual, and moral men and women 
out of the children entrusted to his care. Whatever 
qualities he thinks essential to such manhood and 
womanhood, these he should honestly, and diligently, 
and intelligently strive to form or cultivate in his 
pupils. This is his general duty ; all particular duties 
are such as work to this end. 

Emerson has said that the tiller of the soil should 
be not merely a farmer, but a man on a farm ; that 
the scholar should be not merely a reader and thinker, 
but a man reading and thinking. The idea is a fine 
one; each should strive to be 'a whole man, not a 
piece of a man. In like manner we may say that 
the teacher should not be a mere schoolmaster, but 
a man teaching school. He should be a large-hearted, 
big-brained, strong man. 

“ Power that comes from knowledge is not to be 
despised,” says one eminent writer, “but, after all, 
it is the teacher quite as much as the thing taught. 
There were one or two men in college when I was 
there who will never die out of my memory. I do 
not remember a single proposition in Euclid, nor 
one single problem in Algebra, nor one single lesson 


648 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

in Latin, nor in Greek; I do not remember the act 
of being taught by anybody, though I was taught 
some; but the men that taught me — I remember 
them. They were men of quite a wide range. There 
was the venerable Dr. Humphrey, an old prophet, 
as it were. There was a grandeur in the man’s con¬ 
science, and in his large sense of manliness. I recol¬ 
lect him in my life, and think back to him. And 
there was Professor Hitchcock, in the chair of natural 
sciences. I shall never lose the thought of him. I 
ate at his table and saw him daily for a whole year; 
and to see him was to learn the best of lessons. I 
learned from him of shells, and bird-tracks, and the 
other clues in geology revealed by him ; but he was 
the most phenomenal of all things that I learned. 
And there was Professor Fiske, pale and slender, our 
teacher of Greek — intense, acrid, crystalline. Now 
the books I have forgotten, and the lectures I have 
forgotten; but the men who gave them — not one of 
them, not one of them ! Knowledge is good; books 
can teach that; but when a man teaches it, he teaches 
more than knowledge. He gives himself to you, and 
works upon you.” 

Of like tenor are Garfield’s saying that a log cabin, 
with him sitting as student at one end of a plank 
bench, and Mark Hopkins as teacher at the other end, 
would be a whole college ; and the oft-quoted remark 
of Emerson to his daughter that he did not care so 
much what she was studying at school,— that could 
be rearranged at almost any time, but he wanted 






CHARACTER-BUILDING. 649 

to know who was her teacher—wanted to know, 
in short, that he was a man , teaching. 

The scholar should reach all the way from God 
to the ignorant crowd. And this also may apply 
to the teacher. On the side of the intellect he should 
reach up into the highest regions of thought and 
knowledge; on the side of the sympathies he should 
reach down and stand on a level with his pupils. The 
teacher whose sympathies are not so broad as they 
ought to be has forgotten how he felt and thought 
when a child, and he cannot replace in his mind 
those ways of thought and feeling. He cannot under¬ 
stand his pupils, and they cannot understand him. 

They are in the condition of an Englishman and 
% 

a German, each ignorant of the others language, 
yet trying to carry on a profitable conversation. This 
is the perfect teacher, who reaches from God to the 
little child, but this teacher scarcely exists. The 
good teacher is he who stands in the middle and 
reaches far out in both directions. 

The teacher should be a scholar. He must have 
something to teach. That he should be able to 
obtain a license is by no means enough. I should 
scarcely think it worth while to send my child to a 
man or woman who knew nothing beyond the so- 
called “common-branches,” and who even there per- 
haps felt the ground to quake beneath his feet, who 
had not a thought of his own and no power to com¬ 
prehend the thoughts of others, whose highest idea 
of scholarship was the accummulation of insignificant 


650 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

facts. What nourishing mental food for a child it 
must be to discuss and memorize the wondrous and 
world-important fact that the city of Verkhoiansk is 
on the river Tana, in Siberia, latitude 66 north, longi¬ 
tude 131 east; that the Ogawai river in Africa, empties 
a little north of Cape Lopez, latitude 1 south, longi¬ 
tude 9 east; that Massachusetts is not a state, because 
her official designation is as a “ commonwealth ”; that 
General O’Hara, acting for General Cornwallis, sur¬ 
rendered with eight thousand and eighty-seven men, 
at Yorktown, at four o’clock in the afternoon of Friday, 
on the nineteenth of October, seventeen hundred and 
eighty-one. No, the teacher’s mind and knowledge 
must be broad enough to enable him to distinguish 
between vital matters and those of no consequence, 
to deal more with principles than with facts, and to 
make his teaching pleasant enough for the child to 
see some of the delights of study, and wish to enjoy 
them himself. 

Just now the great hobby among teachers seems 
to be “ methods,” and every school-keeper is looking 
to pedagogics and applied psychology as the Jeru¬ 
salem where he can find salvation, as the holy bones 
whose touch will transport him at once into professor- 
dom. Methods are well enough in their place, but I 
should rather advise the young teacher to go ahead 
and get something to teach ; the methods will take 
care of themselves if he has any talent for teaching. 
The what is more necessary than the how ; and the 
teacher should not stop when he has got what might 


1 


CHARACTER-BUILDING. 651 

be considered a fair education. If he does, and thus 
allows his mind to stand still, he will soon find that 
he is getting weak and rusty, and that his pupils 
are losing their interest, and that he is falling back 
in his profession. To keep his mind bright and 
vigorous, he must labor continually even to old age, 
making new excursions into the fields of literature, 
science, history, or whatever his special study may be. 

It was observed that the teacher’s obligation does 
not stop at intellectual training; it includes moral 
training as well. Moral education may be imparted in 
two ways, by precept and by example. Undoubtedly 
instruction upon topics relating to morals should be 
given occasionally, when opportunity offers. This 
instruction need not be religious in its character, and 
should not be sectarian. But this is not the most 
useful way of cultivating a good moral sentiment in 
the young people. A deed is always stronger than 
a word. You may talk morality two hours a day, 
and if your life is bad, your teaching will not only 
be fruitless, but it will be positively hurtful, because 
your hypocrisy will disgust and repel your hearers. 
The most influential preachers of morality are those 
whose talents are such as to secure them the respect 
and admiration of the young, and whose lives are 
pure and lovely. Such are sure to become models 
for some, at least, of their flock. Be honest, be 
sympathetic, be independent, be courageous, be dili¬ 
gent, and you will not fail to see some diligent, 
courageous, sympathetic, honest, and independent boys 


652 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

and girls growing up about you. Make your own 
life at least as good as your teachings, if you would 
do your whole duty to your school. 



Probably there is no other point in the relations 
of teacher and pupil which is so warmly contested as 
the question of punishment — whether it is expedient, 
and whether it is right. In ancient Rome we know 
that flogging was the order of the day in the schools. 
It continued to be so from that time until a few 
years ago, when it began to be thought cruel to 
whip children. Public sentiment at the present time 
seems to be very strongly against punishment. Cer¬ 
tainly no one favors the old custom of constant beat¬ 
ing, when the teachers scepter was a ferrule in his 
hand, and the badges of his authority were tough 
birch rods hanging upon the wall. But are we not 
swinging too far in the other direction ? A great 
many wise and good men believe that there is too 
much laxity in both home and school, and that it 
cannot result in any good to the children. The 
whole matter falls back upon the simple question of 
who has the right to govern, whose will is to be 
supreme in case of conflict,—the teacher’s will, of 
course; nobody disputes that. But most children 
are like grown people, in that they want the free 
exercise of their own desires, and will not yield 
unless compelled by some higher power to do so. 



DISCIPLINE. 


653 

Some children have their moral natures so well 
developed that they can be led to see what is right, 
and then to do it because it is right. But there are 
few teachers of much experience who have not had 
in their charge pupils whose sense of right and 
wrong seemed to be located almost entirely in the 
shoulders and limbs. With such children the proverb 

w 

holds good — to spare the rod is to spoil the child. 

Rosencranz has this to say of corporal punishment, 
and it seems that he takes the most sensible view 
of the subject: “ Corporal punishment implies physi¬ 

cal pain. Generally it consists of whipping, and this 
is perfectly justifiable in case of persistent defiance 
of authority, of obstinate carelessness, or of malicious 
evil-doing, so long or so often as the higher perceptions 
of the offender are closed against appeal. But it must 
not be administered too often, or with undue severity. 
To resort to deprivation of food is cruel. But, while 
we condemn the false view of seeing in the rod the 
only panacea for all embarrassing questions of dis¬ 
cipline on the teacher’s part, we can have no sympathy 
for the sentimentality which assumes that the dignity 
of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child. 
It is wrong thus to confound self-conscious humanity 
with child humanity, for to the average child himself 
a blow is the most natural form of retribution, and that 
in which all other efforts at influence end at last. The 
fully grown man ought, certainly, not to be flogged, 
for this kind of punishment places him on a level 
with the child; or, where it is barbarously inflicted, 



654 


DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 


reduces him to the level of the brute, and thus abso- 

% 

lutely does degrade him. • But with the child this 
is not necessarily true.” 

The privilege of expulsion ought alsc to be granted 
to the teacher. His duties are to the whole school, 
and not to any individual, and if a pupil persists in 
annoying and disturbing the school, is it not clear 
that right and justice demand his removal ? It is 

a serious thing to expel a boy from school ; it not 

* 

infrequently results in great evil to him, for it gen¬ 
erally subjects him to evil influences. He will be 
likely to find his boon companions among the lower 
classes who lounge in the streets, or spend their time 
in idleness and vice. Expulsion then, ought to be 
used only as a last resort. But one pupil cannot 
in justice be allowed to disturb and contaminate a 
school of forty or fifty, and if he falls after continued 
trials of gentler means to reform him, his fault must 
be upon his own head 



The teacher and the pupils have in kindness a 
mutual duty for the performance of which they have 
daily opportunities. There are very many things 
which the pupils would be glad to know about and 
concerning which the teacher can give information. 
He should be kind enough to do so, even at the cost 
of considerable trouble to himself. He will find that 
the time has been profitably expended. Any exhibi- 


MUTUAL KINDNESS AND RESPECT. 655 

tion of kindness, generosity, and gentleness, by the 
teacher is sure to bring its legitimate reward in an 
increased affection on the part of the scholars. Often 
a little kind treatment will conquer a child’s evil 
tendencies and reclaim him for the good, when pun¬ 
ishment might perhaps drive him still farther from 
the path of virtue. The pupils may show their kindly 
feelings for the teacher by abstaining from practices 
which annoy and disturb him in his work. 

Both teacher and taught should have and show 
a thorough respect for each other. It is very far 
from being conducive to the purpose of the school 
for the teacher to be continually scolding and fret¬ 
ting at his pupils, calling them fools, blockheads, or 
numbskulls, or for the pupils to speak of the teacher 
as “old Jones,” “cross old Huff,” etc. Each should 
speak to and of the other with entire respect and 
good will. 

The pupil owes to the teacher obedience in all 
proper matters connected with school work. The 
teacher knows better than he the importance of his 
work and the best means of accomplishing it, and 
prompt and cheerful obedience should be rendered, 
even if he does not perceive the utility of the com¬ 
mand. The pupil also owes it to the teacher, to his 
parents, and to himself, to be diligent and faithful, 
to perform fully all tasks imposed upon him, and 
in every way to co-operate with the teacher for the 
crood of the school. Let him rest assured that if 
he neglects his work now, the day will come when 


656 DUTIES OF TEACHER AND PUPIL. 

he will repent his foolish idleness, and wish that 
he had heeded the exhortations of his elders to use 
well his time while it was his. Then, young reader, 
“ use your youthful days, learn betimes to be wiser : 
in the great scale of fortune the arm seldom stands 
still ; you must climb or sink, suffer or triumph, 
be anvil or hammer; you must rule and win, or 
serve and lose.” 










Duties to ©overnmeut. 



LL beings have their laws; the 
Deity has His laws, the material 
world has its laws, superior intel¬ 
ligences have their laws, the beasts 
have their laws, and man has his 
laws. “ Of law there can be no 
less acknowledged than that her seat is the 
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of 
the world; all things do her homage, the 
very least as feeling her care, and the 
greatest as not exempted from her power; 
both angels and men, and creatures of 
what condition soever, though each in a different 
sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent 
admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.” 

In a strictly natural state of affairs, there would 
probably be no such thing as government; or if 
any did exist, it would be of the crudest form. 
Government, as we know it, is an artificial thing, 
a thing born of artificial necessities, and seemingly it 


42 


657 




















658 DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 

increases in complexity as the world advances in 
civilization. 

Among animals we find some very rude begin¬ 
nings toward settled social order, but nothing in any 
way elaborate. In a herd of wild horses, there is 

always one older, stronger, or fleeter than the others, 
who acts as their leader. At the approach of danger, 
he begins the flight, and the rest follow him as 

obediently as an army follows its commander. When 
a flock of cranes alight to feed, sentinels are posted 
who stand with their long necks stretched up into 

the air, alert to perceive any danger that may be 

near. If any occasion arises, the sentinels give the 
alarm, and the whole flock flies away. Certain kinds 
of birds, as ducks and geese, fly in regular order, 
marshaled by their leaders. Others, as swallows, 
congregate in vast flocks just before their annual 
migration. 

Among uncivilized races there is government, but 
it is of a very primitive sort. With them the only 
title to authority is superior personal ability of some 
kind, whether mental, or physical, or moral. Accord¬ 
ing to Carlyle, the word king is derived from “ kon - 
ning, which means canning, an able-man.” Conven¬ 
tional authority, unsupported by strong individual 
claims, is something which could not stand for a 
moment among the Indians of our western plains. 
A feeble-minded king could have no place in their 
body politic. But in the settled and well-ordered 
countries of Europe, place is reverenced, regardless 


DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 


659 


of its occupant. Government with them has grown 
into a vast institution, independent of individual men. 
Evidently then, political government is artificial in its 
nature, a thing designed by man for his convenience. 

Its origin is wrapped in impenetrable obscurity. 
Those who are fond of theorizing about legal and 
political institutions have had several different ways 
of accounting for the how of the formation of govern¬ 
ment. It may be that it originated merely in a pro¬ 
cess of usurpation ; the strong man overpowering his 
weaker neighbor and robbing him of some portion of 
his goods, he in turn being robbed by a still stronger, 
and so on, until finally one became king and had all 
the others for subjects. Or it may have grown out 
of the family relation, — the father ruling his house¬ 
hold and extending the range of his authority as the 
family grew greater. Or, perhaps, men living in a 
state of nature had arrived at a point where the 
strength of each individual was insufficient for his pro¬ 
tection, and where union of forces thus became neces¬ 
sary. And still again, many think that government 
is a divine institution, created directly by God, and 
a part of the original plan of creation. But whether 
it had its origin in the divine right of the strongest, 
or whether men voluntarily and of one accord 
gathered themselves into a society for mutual pro¬ 
tection and advancement, and selected the manner 
of rule they wished, or in whatever way the first 
tottering steps toward the complex modern political 
machine were taken, the why of its beginning as 



66o 


DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 


well as the reason for its vigilant continuance is 
quite easily explained. 

The primary purpose of all government, whether 
simple or complex, is mutual protection against the 
aggressions of outside enemies. It is for this that 
the wild horses have their leaders, the cranes their 
sentinels, and the Indian tribes their chieftains; 
and it is mostly for this purpose that the kingdoms 
and republics of the present were organized with 
their standing armies, thousands of civil officers, 
and other apparatus. But for this, it may be that 
no such thing as government would exist. All other 
things are incidental or secondary to it. 

But governments, having once been organized to 
this end, have found it necessary in course of time, 
as their respective peoples have emerged from the 
state of savagery, to take cognizance of other matters. 
The principal duties of a civilized government, in 
addition to the one already pointed out, are: to 
protect its citizens from the encroachments of one 
another, encouraging the virtuous in their virtue, 
and restraining the vicious from their vice; to pro¬ 
vide means for the proper training and education 
of the young; to promote by /all means in its power 
the material property of its subjects; and to regu¬ 
late all matters which must be settled by regularly 
adopted rules, — such things as weights, measures, 
coinage of money, the disposition of the estates of 
persons dying intestate, etc. It may be remarked 
in passing that the least amount of active govern- 



OBEDIENCE. 


661 


ment which will answer the purposes, is the best. 
Government should interfere with the life and affairs 
of its citizens at the smallest possible number of 
points. It is well to scan closely every proposition 
to increase the scope of the laws, and reject it' if it 
is not clearly essential to the well-being of the state 
and the people. 

The fact that duties are reciprocal has already been 
noted in these pages. If, I owe you a duty, you 
owe me one in return. Since government owes us 
the duties of protection and the promotion of our 
well-being in all possible ways, we must, in accordance 
with this principle, owe it certain corresponding duties, 
and it is necessary that we should clearly understand 
what they are. 

The following analysis of our duty to the govern¬ 
ment under which we choose to live, makes but four 
divisions of that duty; simple, yet covering the entire 
ground: 


r Obedience. 


Duties to Government. 


Financial Support. 
Support in War. 


Moral Support. 



The first of them, the one which comprehends 
nearly all the others, is that of the general subjection 
of our wills to its will. Government has no means of 
protecting us except through ourselves, and it is theie- 




662 


DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 


fore necessary that in all matters essential to the per¬ 
formance of its duties, it should have full control over 
us. Thus, it acquires a right to command our 
fortunes our efforts, and our lives; to restrain our 
liberty, and to overrule our wishes. Very many things 
which are in themselves right, become, when forbidden 
by government, wrong, and it is our place to avoid 
them. Thus, for example, we have a natural right 
to go where we please and take with us anything 
that is our own, without restraint. But when govern¬ 
ment fixes taxes on imported goods as one of its 
sources of revenue, it is not only legally wrong, but 
morally wrong, to avoid the payment of those taxes, 
even though it be in the assertion of a right that 
naturally belongs to ,us. Or, when government, in 
time of war, and as a means of securing its own safety, 
forbids all persons to go outside of the country, or 
to hold communication with persons living in other 
lands, it becomes a violation of duty on our part to 
disobey these commands, even if our purposes are 
entirely innocent in themselves. Government may go 
yet farther than that, and rightfully command us to 
do things which are in themselves wrong. Thus, it 
may demand of us that we shall kill its enemies, an 
act, which, under ordinary circumstances, would be 
murder, and the blackest of crimes, but which, when 
commanded by government in due form and for proper 
cause, is transformed into a sacred duty. 

It is impossible that all the regulations of the wisest 
government should equally benefit every individual; 


OBEDIENCE. 


66 3 

and sometimes the general good will demand arrange¬ 
ments which will interfere with the interests of par¬ 
ticular members or classes of the nation. In such 
circumstances, the individual is bound to regard the 
inconveniences under which he suffers as inseparable 
from a social, connected state, as the result of the 
condition which God has appointed, and not as the 
fault of his rulers ; and he should cheerfully submit, 
recollecting how much more he receives from the 
community than he is called to resign to it. Dis¬ 
affection toward a government which is administered 
with a view to the general welfare, is a great crime ; 
and such opposition, even to a bad government, as 
springs from and spreads a restless temper, and an 
unwillingness to yield to wholesome and necessary 
restraint, is a crime just as great. In proportion 
as a people lack a conscientious regard to the laws, 
and are prepared to evade them by fraud, or to arrest 
their operation by violence,— in that proportion they 
need and deserve an arbitrary government, strong 
enough to crush at a single blow every symptom of 
opposition. 

But there are limits which the government may 
not pass except for the most substantial reasons ; it 
has no right to confine our liberties in any way that 
is not absolutely necessary. Only in a cause vital 
to its safety may it bid us do a thing morally wrong. 
It has no right to restrain in any way the freedom 
of thought. Under ordinary circumstances it cannot 
properly place any barriers to the freedom of speech, 



664 


DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 


or limit us in any of those things which have in them¬ 
selves no moral quality. The general maxim should 
not be lost sight of that the least possible degree 
of constraint consistent with the proper performance 
of its duties should be imposed upon us by govern¬ 
ment. But within these limits our obedience should 
be absolute and unhesitating. 

Financial Support. 

Government, of course, incurs large expenses in 
the performance of its duties, and there is only one 
way in which it can obtain funds to liquidate these 
expenses, namely, by contributions from its citizens. 
The experiment of government engaging in mercan¬ 
tile business was once tried in France, and upon a 
colossal scale. The crash that followed was enor¬ 
mous. It is the citizen’s duty to give cheerfully and 
honestly his proportionate share toward meeting the 
necessary expenses of government. It is fraud, and 
fraud of just as black a dye as any other kind of 
fraud, for him to make dishonest returns of the 
property he owns, or in any other way to attempt 
to defeat the demands of the national authorities. In 
some way it has become a widely prevalent feeling 
that it is not wrong to cheat the government; that 
whatever one can unfairly get out of it is so much 
pure gain, and is not a matter to be accounted for 
before the bar of conscience. Men who would scorn 
to cheat a private citizen in the slightest degree, 


FINANCIAL SUPPORT. 


665 

have no compunctions whatever about cheating - their 
government, and even about stealing from it directly. 
There is certainly no foundation in fact or principle 
for this sentiment. Government performs for us a 
great many very important functions which could 
not be performed by any less powerful body. And 
even if other corporate bodies could do the work, 
they would not (and, but for the dishonesty and 
incompetency of officers, could not) do it so cheaply; 
for, unlike other corporations and individuals, it asks 
no profit, but gives us cost price on everything. 
Surely it is entitled to have the little that it asks 
paid promptly, honestly, and without grumbling, and 
to have men act with as much integrity toward it as 
toward men and other corporate bodies. 

« 

Support in War. 

it occasionally happens that a nation is obliged 
to use sterner weapons than diplomats and envoys. 
They are like individuals in that they do not always 
treat one another with fairness. Their promises are 
sometimes broken; they sometimes use underhanded 
means to gain an advantage over their rivals. They 
are unable to resist the temptation of getting fair 
-territories and rich revenues which do not belong to 
them. In such cases, war becomes a much to be 
regretted necessity, as the only possible means of 
defending our national rights. Probably the time may 
come when nations will settle their conflicting claims 


666 


DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 


by the bloodless method of arbitration more than 
they do now. The International Congress, to which 
each nation shall send representatives, as each state 
sends representatives to our National Congress, and 
which shall decide matters of dispute between various 
countries according to their merits, may some day 
be an accomplished fact. If these things shall be so, 
the occasions for war will greatly decrease in number. 
But at present the securest peace is the one which 
has been conquered, and which can be maintained 
by force of arms; and so long as human nature 
remains what it is, the necessity for fighting, or at least 
for the ability to fight whenever circumstances may 
seem to require it, will not soon entirely disappear. 
Hence, it is necessary that government should have 
the authority to command our services in the field 
whenever it thinks proper; and it is our duty to obey 
that call as promptly as any other. It is rightly 
considered a noble deed, one worthy of all honor, for 
a man to give his life for his native land. Will not 
gallant young Captain Hale’s name be remembered 
as long as the story of American freedom is told ? 
Was not Arnold Winkleried’s death worth more to 
the world and to himself than a hundred lives could 
have been? Does not the rugged mountain pass 
receive a new beauty from his deed ? One of the 
noteworthy incidents of the war between the states, 
was the enlistment of Elias Howe, the inventor of 
the sewing machine, as a private in the Union army. 
He was feeble and was past the most active days of 


SUPPORT IN WAR. 


667 


his life, and, moreover, he was a millionaire, but he 
wished to serve his country ; and as, knowing nothing 
of military affairs, he was incapable of filling an official 
position, he offered himself as a private soldier, and 
joined the army in that capacity. It is doubly 
degrading to attempt to evade this call of duty, for 
it is not only defrauding the nation of something 
which is due to it, but it is allowing fear, or other 
selfish considerations, to rule us in opposition to the 
higher voice of right. 

There are those whose *'eligious beliefs are such 
that it would be wrong for them to fight, even if 
commanded to do so by government. Such persons 
are generally excused from war service; but if not, 
they would have their remedy in expatriation. A 
citizen may rightly leave his native country and 
renounce his allegiance to it at any time, except 
when government has forbidden it temporarily upon 
the ground of public safety. This is the proper 
remedy against all actions of government which con¬ 
flict with our ideas of right, that is, it is the ulti¬ 
mate remedy; the first resort is, of course, to use 
our power as citizens to change the government’s 
course of action. 

But so long as we remain in a country, that long 
are we subject to it, and that long ought we to 
yield implicit obedience to its commands ; that long 
ought we to give of our substance for its support; 
that long ought we to stand ready to sacrifice our 
lives for its safety ; and that long ought we, hf 


668 


DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 


precept and by example, to nourish and sustain a 
sentiment of patriotism among our fellow-citizens, and 
among those who will be citizens in future years. 



The final duty we owe to government is that of 
moral support, and this is especially important in 
such a country as ours, where the people are the 
court of supreme authority. We should defend it 
against those who wrongfully assail it with words. 
Malicious attacks are constantly being made upon all 
governments by parties who have been disappointed 
and angered at their failure to secure some personal 
end,, and by those who “have an a,xe to grind.” 
These attacks of course have a tendency to destroy 
the confidence of people in the ability and integrity 
of government, and thus to weaken it and make it 
powerless to perform its various functions. We 
should ourselves entertain a sentiment of patriotism, 
and we should cultivate that sentiment in The minds 
of the young. 

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead, 

Who never to himself hath said, 

This is my own, my native land ? 

Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d 
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d, 

From wandering on a foreign strand? 

If such there be, go, mark him well; 
t For him no minstrel raptures swell; 


MORAL SUPPORT. 


669 


High though his titles, proud his name, 

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, 

Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 

The wretch, concentered all in self, 

Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 

And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust from whence he sprung, 

Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung. 

These fine lines of Scott’s are not too strong. 
There are few things which add more dignity to 
the character of a man than love of country. All 
great nations have been rich in patriotic citizens. 
In those nations whose power has waned, and which 
have sunk from commanding influence into insignifi¬ 
cance, decaying patriotism has been the sure sign 
preceding their fall. Whenever the citizens of a 
country become / so absorbed in their private affairs 
that they can give no attention to the needs of their 
government; when the protection of the whole country 
becomes the business of a class of politicians, and 
is entrusted entirely to that class — then is the deluge 
very near. Rousseau, in his “ Considerations upon 
the Government of Poland,” speaks thus concerning 
the education of the young in patriotism : “ National 
education belongs only to free men ; they alone have 
a common existence and are truly united by law. A 
Frenchman, an Englishman, a Spaniard, an Italian, a 
Russian, are all pretty much the same man; they 
leave college already completely fashioned for license, 
that is to say, for servitude. At twenty years a Pole 



6jO DUTIES TO GOVERNMENT. 

ought not to be any other man ; he ought to be a 

Pole. It would be my wish that in learning to read 

he should read the things of his country; that at 

ten years he should be acquainted with all its pro- 

« 

ductions, at twelve with all its provinces, all its. 
roads, all its towns; that at fifteen he should know 
all its history, at sixteen all its laws; that there 
should not have been in all Poland a beautiful action 
or an illustrious man of whom his memory and his 
heart were not full, and of whom he could not 
furnish a complete account upon the instant.” Per¬ 
haps the somewhat visionary Jean Jacques may have 
exaggerated the importance of a strictly national 
education ; perhaps such an extreme course as he 
suggests might breed a race of narrow-minded men; 
but at any rate the idea is worth thinking about. 
Well pondered, it may become the source of much 
good. 

/ 

We should take part in the cares and responsi¬ 
bilities devolving upon the citizens of a country whose 
people are sovereign. The corruption of politics has 
grown so great that a decent man dislikes to have 
anything to do with it unnecessarily. Many of the 
best and wisest citizens decline to participate in it, 
even to the small extent of voting. It is true that? 
politics is a foul mess which a man with clean hands 
and a healthy nose hates to approach, but is it to 
be made cleaner by all the good men deserting it 
and leaving it entirely to the ward politicians and 
their friends, to the inmates of rum-houses, to the 


MORAL SUPPORT. 


671 


bribers and bribe-takers? If you would have political 
affairs pure and respectable, you must not shun them, 
but must bear your part, and impart to them somewhat 
of your purity and respectability. You should keep 
yourself informed of the progress of national affairs, 
and should act intelligently and unselfishly for the 
best interests of your country. When the time comes 
for the casting of ballots, however displeased you may 
be with the course of events, or however much your 
personal interest may have been thwarted, you should 
go to the polls and vote honestly and fearlessly for 
the men and the principles that you think ought to 
rule. When all the good and the wise do this, and 
cast their influences into the scale on the side of 
purity, there will be less fraud and bare-faced rascality 
in politics than we now have to lament. 





Duties to the Creator, 



T is not our intention in this 
chapter to enter upon any dis¬ 
cussion of religious views. There 
is ground beyond all sectarianism 
which is ample for us to stand 
upon. Schiller somewhere says 
that underneath the crust of all religions 
lies religion itself, the idea of the divine. 
And it is this “ religion itself,” that we 
wish to discuss, — the humble recognition* 
of the divine that dwells in us and around 
us. Whether a man be Christian, or Jew, 
or Mohammedan, or Bhuddist, or Infidel 
or whatever he may be, he can not avoid the feel¬ 
ing, even if he would, that he is subject to powers 
higher and mightier than himself. He may embody 
all these powers in the person of one mighty and 
terrible God; or he may, like the Greeks, fill the 
earth, and the air, and the sea with malign or benef¬ 
icent beings who work to hinder or to promote his 

prosperity. But whether he calls it God, or Jehovah, 

672 






























DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


673 


or Allah, or Jove, or The Great Spirit, or whether 
he calls it by no name at all, the feeling that 
something is above him, nevertheless, exists within 
his breast. Leaving out of consideration all direct 
revelations given by God to his inspired writers, who 
can avoid reverencing the power that lies behind the 
sunshine which warms the earth and quickens the 
germ hiding in its bosom; and the storm that 
sweeps across the country, dealing out death and 
destruction on every hand; and the ocean that in 
peace bears upon its shoulders the myriad fleets of 
commerce, or in anger hurls them furiously against 
the jagged rocks ; and the mountains that rear their 
hoary heads above the clouds ; and the valleys that 
lie between them, smiling with their many-hued 
growth. He must be in spiritual poverty, whose 
soul is so narrow as not to perceive and venerate 
the greatness that surrounds him, and more yet 
the greatness that is in him. Veneration does not 
include the feeling we commonly mean by the word 
fear; it ofoes hand in hand with love. It is then 
no craven spirit which worships, but a spirit manly 
enough and great enough to recognize the superiority 
of that which is greater than it, without any feeling 
of selfish jealousy. It is a true saying that only the 
good can appreciate the good. Ruskin somewhere 
says that it is a matter of the simplest demonstra¬ 
tion that no man is ever truly appreciated except by 
another who is his equal or superior. The nearer 
one comes to equality, the nearer he approaches to 
43 


* 


674 


DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


the ability of true appreciation. The more venera¬ 
tion one has for all things that are divine, on this 
side of superstition, the greater and nobler man he is. 

It has been said that all the duties given as due 
to ourselves and to others, are due also to the Creator; 
because they are essential to our perfection, and 
perfection must have been the end for which we were 
created. If we are dishonest, lazy, rude, cruel, unchar¬ 
itable, or unsympathetic; if we allow ourselves to 
remain unnecessarily ignorant, or if we neglect to 
educate any of the gentler parts of our nature, we 
are doing a wrong to him who made us with such 
wonderful capabilities. 

But these are not all that we owe to the Creator 
and Sovereign of the universe. Other duties, and still 
more essential to right relations with the Deity, are 
ours. Foremost of these is reverence — reverence in 
the broadest and fullest sense of the term. The 
importance of this sentiment of reverence for what 
is higher, this worship, this religiousness, can hardly 
be conceived. It is the prime fact of the universe; 
in every man’s character it is the one thing. The 
presence or the absence of this feeling marks his 
reliability or his untrustworthiness, the nobility or the 
degradation of his spirit. Listen to what some of 
the wise men of the world have had to say upon 
this and kindred topics: 

“True is it that, in these days, man can do almost 
all things, except to not obey. True, likewise, that 
whoso cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule; 



DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


675 


lie that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior 
of nothing, the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, 
believe not that man has lost his faculty of reverence; 
that if it slumber in him it is gone dead. Painful 
for man is that same rebellious independence, when 
it has become inevitable; only in loving companionship 
with his fellows does he feel safe; only in reverently 
bowing down before the higher does he feel himself 
exalted.— Carlyle. 

“ Religion, the final center of repose; the goal 
to which all things tend, which gives to time all its 
importance, to eternity all its glory ; apart from which 
man is a shadow, his very existence a riddle, and the 
stupendous scenes which surround him as incoherent 
and unmeaning as the leaves which the sibyl scattered 
in the wind .”—Robert Hall. 

“ Religion is the mortar that binds society together; 
the granite pedestal of liberty; the strong backbone 
of the social system.”— Guthrie. 

“ Religion tends to the ease and pleasure, the peace 
and tranquility of our minds; which all the wisdom 
of the ancients did always aim at as the utmost felicity 
of this life.”— Tillotson. 

“ I have lived long enough to know what I did 
not at one time believe — that no society can be 
upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment 
of religion. ”— La . Place. 

“ True religion is the foundation of society. When 
that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric 
cannot be stable nor lasting.”— Burke. 




6/6 


DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


“ The pleasure of the religious man is an easy 
and portable pleasure, such an one as he carries about 
in his bosom, without alarming either the eye or the 
envy of the world. A man putting all his pleasures 
into this one is like a traveler’s putting all his wealth 
into one jewel; the value is the same, and the con¬ 
venience greater.”— South . 

“There are no principles but those of religion to 
be depended on in cases of real distress; and these are 
able to encounter the worst emergencies, and to bear 
us up under all the changes and chances to which 
our life is subject.”— Sterne. 

“Few men suspect, perhaps no man comprehends, 
the extent of the support given by religion to the 
virtues of ordinary life. No man, perhaps, is aware 
how much our moral and social sentiments are fed 
from this fountain ; how powerless conscience would 
become without the belief in a God; how palsied 
would be human benevolence, were there not the 
sense of a higher benevolence to quicken and sustain 
it ; how suddenly the whole social fabric would quake, 
and with what a fearful crash it would sink into 
hopeless ruins, were the ideas of a Supreme Being, 
of accountableness, and of a future life, to be utterly 
erased from every mind. Once let men thoroughly 
believe that they are the work and sport of chance— 
that no superior intelligence concerns itself with 
human affairs; that all their improvements perish 
forever at death; that the weak have no guardian 
and the injured no avenger ; that there is no recom- 





DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 677 

pense for sacrifice to uprightness and the public good ; 
that an oath is unheard in heaven ; that secret crimes 
have no witness but the perpetrator ; that human 
existence has no purpose and human virtue no unfail¬ 
ing friend ; that this brief life is everything to us, 
and death is total, everlasting extinction—once let 
men thoroughly believe these things, and who, can 
conceive or describe the extent of the desolation 
which would follow? We hope, perhaps, that human 
laws and our natural sympathy would hold society 
together. As reasonably might we believe that, were 
the sun quenched in the heavens, our torches could 
illuminate and our fires quicken and fertilize the earth. 
What is there in human nature to awaken respect 
and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of 
a day ? and what is he more if atheism be true ? 
Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, 
and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole 
man. Appetite knowing no restraint, poverty and 
suffering having no solace or hope, would trample 
in scorn on the restraints of human laws. Virtue, 
duty, principle, would be mocked and spurned as 
unmeaning sounds. A sordid self-interest would sup¬ 
plant every other feeling, and man would become in 
fact, what the theory of atheism declares him to be, 
a companion for brutes. Religion befriends liberty. 
It diminishes the necessity of public restraints, and 
supersedes in a great degree the use of force in 
administering the laws ; and this it does by making 
men a law to themselves, and by repressing the dis- 



678 DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 

position to disturb and injure society. Take away 
the purifying and restraining influence of religion, 
and selfishness, rapacity, and injustice will break out 
in new excesses ; and amidst the increasing perils of 
society, government must be strengthened to defend 
it, must accumulate means of repressing disorder and 
crime; and this strength and these means may be, 
and often have been, turned against the freedom of 
the state which they were meant to secure. Diminish 
principle, and you increase the need of force in a 
community. In this country government needs not 
the array of power which you meet in other nations; 
no guards of soldiers, no hosts of spies, no vexa¬ 
tious regulations of police; but accomplishes its benef¬ 
icent purposes by a few unarmed judges and civil 
officers, and operates so silently around us, and comes 
so seldom in contact with us, that many of us enjoy 
its blessings with hardly a thought of its existence. 
This is the perfection of freedom; and to what do 
we owe this condition ? I answer, to the power of 
those laws which religion writes on our hearts, which 
unite and concentrate public opinion against injustice 
and oppression, which spread a spirit of equity and 
good-will through the community. Thus religion is 
the soul of freedom, and no nation under heaven 
has such an interest in it as ourselves.”— Cbanning ,. 

“It is well said, in every sense, that a man’s religion 
is the chief fact with regard to him. A man’s, or a 
nation of men’s. By religion I do not mean here 
the church creed which he professes, the articles of 



DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 679 

faith which he will sign, and, in words or otherwise, 
assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. 
We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to 
almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under 
each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, 
this profession and assertion; which is often only a 
profession and assertion from the outworks of the 
man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if 
even so deep as that. But the thing a man does 
practically believe (and this is often enough without 
asserting it even to himself, much less to others); 
the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and 
know for certain, concerning his vital relations to 
this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny 
there — that is in all cases the primary thing for him, 
and creatively determines all the rest. That is his 
religion; or, it may be, his mere skepticism and no 
religion; it is the manner in which he feels himself 
to be spiritually related to the unseen world, or no 
world ; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell 
me to a very great extent what the man is, and 
what the kind of things he will do. Of a man or 
of a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, what 
religion they had? Was it heathenism,— plurality of 
gods,' mere sensuous representation of this mystery 
of life, and for chief recognized element therein, 
physical force? Was it Christianism; faith in an 
invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; time, 
through every meanest moment of it, resting on 
eternity; pagan empire of force displaced by a nobler 



68o 


DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


supremacy, that of holiness? Was it skepticism, 
uncertainty and inquiry whether there was an unseen 
world, any mystery of life except a mad one — doubt 
as to all this; or, perhaps, unbelief and flat denial ? 
Answering of this question is giving us the secret of 
the history of the man or nation. The thoughts 
they had were the parents of the actions they did; 
their feelings were parents of their thoughts : it was 
the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the 
outward and the actual; their religion, as I say, was 
the one great fact about them.”— Carlyle. 

In one of the best passages of “Wilhelm Meister’s 
Wauderjahre” (a passage which Carlyle says he would 
rather have written, or been able to write, than all else 
which had appeared in the world since his birth), 
Goethe says that there is one element in human nature 
which must always be fully developed in order that 
. man may be man, complete on every side. And that 
element/ is reverence, reverence l Reverence for that 
which is above us, reverence for that which is about 
us, reverence for that which is beneath us. Nature 
readily conforms itself to fear, but not to reverence. 
One fears a known o'r unknown mighty being. The 
strong seeks to conquer it, the weak man to avoid 
it; both wish to get rid of it, and feel themselves 
happy when they have thrust it aside for a time, when 
their nature has to some extent regained its freedom 
and independence. The natural man repeats this 
operation millions of times in the course of his life; 
from fear he struggles to freedom, from freedom he 



DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 681 

is driven back to fear, and so gets no further. To 
fear is easy, but burdensome; to revere is difficult, 
but pleasant. Unwillingly do men resolve upon 
reverence, or, rather, they never resolve upon it. It 
is a higher sense which must be imparted to their 
nature, and which unfolds itself spontaneously only 
in those specially favored, who, on this account, have 
always been looked upon as saints, as gods. Here 
lies the dignity, here the work of all true religions. 
No religion which is grounded upon fear is regarded 
among us. With reverence, which a man lets rule 
in himself, he can give honor, and yet keep his own 
honor. The religion which rests upon reverence of 
that which is above, is ethnic; it is the religion of 
the peoples, and the first happy absolution from vulgar 
fear; all so-called heathen religions are of this sort. 

The second religion, based upon that reverence 
which we have for what is equal to us, is the philo¬ 
sophic : for the philosopher, who takes his stand in 
the middle, must pull whatever is higher than he 
down to himself, and raise whatever is lower up to 
himself, and only in this middle point does he deserve 
to be called wise. 

The third religion, founded on reverence of that 
which is beneath us, we call the Christian, because 
in it this way of thought most discloses itself; it 
is a finality which humanity could and must reach. 
But^ what a work was there, not only to let the 
earth lie under us and refer ourselves to a higher 
birthplace, but also to recognize lowliness and pov- 


682 


DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


erty, scorn and contempt, shame and misery, suffer¬ 
ing and death, as divine; yea, not to look upon 
sin and transgression even as hindrances, but to 
honor and cherish them as motives to holiness. 
There are traces of this through all ages ; but 
traces are not the goal, and now that this is once 
attained, humanity cannot fall back again. 

“‘And to which of the three religions do you 
adhere?’ asks wondering Wilhelm. ‘To all three,’ 
the wise men reply; for together they bring forth 
the true religion. Out of these three reverences 
springs the highest reverence, reverence of one’s 
self, and these unfold themselves again out of it, 
so that man attains the highest point which he is 
capable of reaching, that he hold himself to be the 
best which God and nature have produced, and 
remain upon this eminence, without being dragged 
down again to the vulgar planes by stupidity and 
self-conceit.”— Goethe. 

“ It is an heroic obedience, to observe the decrees 
of God, merely because they are the decrees of God, 
and not because He has promised to reward the 
observer of them here and hereafter; to observe 
them, although we may quite despair of the future 
reward and may not be so entirely certain of the 
temporal. ”— Lessing. 

“ One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, one only; — an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe’er 



DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 683 

Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 

Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
, All accidents, converting them to good. 

The darts of anguish fix not where the seat 
Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified 
By acquiescence in the Will Supreme 
For time and for eternity ; by faith, 

Faith, absolute in God, including hope, 

And the defense that lies in boundless love 
Of His perfections ; with habitual dread 
Of aught unworthily conceived, endured 
Impatiently; ill-done, or left undone, 

To the dishonor of His holy name. 

Soul of our souls, and safeguard of the world! 
Sustain, Thou only canst, the sick of heart; 

Restore their languid spirits, and recall 
Their lost affections unto Thee and Thine! ” 

— Wordsworth . 

“ He who would undermine those foundations upon 
which the fabric of our future hope is reared, seeks 
to beat down that column which supports the feeble¬ 
ness of humanity: let him but think a moment and 
his heart will arrest the cruelty of his purpose. Would 
he pluck its little treasure from the bosom of poverty ? 
Would he wrest its crutch from the hand of age, and 
remove from the eye of affection the only solace of 

its woe ? The way we tread is rugged at best; we 

« 

tread it, however, more lightly by the prospect of the 
better country to which, we trust, it will lead. Tell 
us not that it will end in the gulf of eternal dissolution, 
or break off in some wild, which fancy may fill up 


1 


684 


DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


as she pleases, but reason is unable to delineate ; 
quench not that beam, which amidst the night of 
this evil world, has cheered the despondency of ill- 
requited worth, and illumined the darkness of suffering 
virtue.”— Mackenzie. 

Sir Humphrey Davy, born in poverty, and in an 
obcure corner of England, was raised by industry 
and merit, unaided by friends, to such distinction, 
that he was chosen at the age of twenty-two, to fill 
the chair of chemistry in the “Royal Institute” of 
London. A few years afterward he was elected 
President of the “Royal Society” of London, and 
stood confessedly at the head of the chemists of 
Europe. His testimony in favor of the consolations 
of religion is of the following character: “ I envy,” 
says he, “ no quality of the mind or intellect in 
others; not genius, power, wit, or fancy; but if I 
could choose what would be most delightful, and, I 
believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm 
religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes 
life a discipline of goodness; — creates new hopes 
when all earthly hopes vanish; — throws over the 
decay, the destruction of existence, the most precious 
of all lights; — awakens life even in death, and from 
corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; — 
makes an instrument of torture and shame the ladder 
of ascent to paradise ; — and, far above all combina¬ 
tions of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful 
visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the 
blessed, the security of everlasting joys, where the 





DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 685 

sensualist and the skeptic see only gloom, decay and 
annihilation.” 

The nature and functions of reverence in man 
has already been shown (page 269). It might be 
called a high form of respect. As we are molded by 
what commands our respect, and as reverence mingles 
with all our mental qualities, influencing the direc¬ 
tion of our affections, and desires, modifying the 
imagination in its search for a higher ideal of per¬ 
fection, and thrilling the spirit with awe at the very 
thought of standing in the presence of an all-wise, 
all-knowing, and beneficent Creator, we see the far- 
reaching influence of a healthy degree of reverence 
in making up the perfect man or woman. It is for 
our own best good, then, that we yield this duty of 
thankfulness and reverence to the Maker of all. 

But need we be always told that “it is best for us” 
ere we are willing to do our duty? Must we, like 
children, be so frequently reminded of the reward to 
come to us for doing the right ? If we are yet so weak 
in real strength of character, so lacking in real great¬ 
ness of heart, then this very reverence is the feeling 
we need to cultivate. Respect for the right, the pure, 
the just, , the good, the loving,— all the sentiments 
that combine in a worshipful reverence for the high¬ 
est— lifts us above selfishness and ennobles us. It 
appears, however, as was said in the “Analysis of 
Duty ” (page 368), that all duties are one. By doing 
our duty toward the Master of the universe, our acts 
redound to our own benefit, and in thus improving 



686 


DUTIES TO THE CREATOR. 


ourselves, we do our duty in part toward our fellow 

creatures, inasmuch as we thus become better asso- 

/ 

ciates and helpers to them. So the net-work of duty 
envelopes us; and if we but study its character and 
scope fully, never wasting our strength in vain strug¬ 
gles to free ourselves from its guidance, the very 
highest good to all will be reached; and nothing short 
of this do we owe to the great Originator. “ Finally, 
brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever 
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, what¬ 
soever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, 
whatsoever things are of good report,” these things 
you owe to the God who made you, and who unfolds 
before you such grand and infinite possibilities. 





PHILOSOPHY OF LABOR. 

HE rule throughout all nature, 
the law of all life, is action. In¬ 
action is death. Every atom in 
creation has its allotted task to 
^ perform in order that the entire 
scheme of change and progress may 
be complete and perfect. We have 
seen in the preceding pages that the 
elements of man’s nature were all sub¬ 
ject to improvement by use (pages 24 
to 354); that in fact they were little 
more than mere capacities of mind and 
body at birth, and would always remain 
crude and undeveloped in the untrained man or 
woman. It requires use, persistent exercise, to bring 
out and improve the various capacities of human 
nature. It is the old story: action is absolutely 

necessary to all growth and progress. 

687 




















688 


THE WORLD OF WORK. 


Should we be surprised, then, to find that work,— 
systematic, well timed work — is always necessary to 
man’s highest good ? That labor, rightly understood, 
is a blessing and not a curse ? Surely the world is 
wise enough to grasp this truth and drop the oriental 
doctrine that labor is a penalty, and nothing more 
than a penalty. Such narrow teaching has done hurt 
enough already. Adam might have lived in Eden 
in a blissful idleness, but let us remember that he 
went out of the garden a changed mortal; and 
though constant toil was now his portion, let us also 
remember that a just, yet loving, God never sends 
upon his creatures one curse, but along with it are 
two blessings. No! the labor that is wisely chosen 
and pursued is but a small curse and a great blessing; 
for, though it sometimes chafes and pains us, it brings 
us our highest enjoyments and our dearest rewards. 

By far the greater part of the suffering and crime 
which exists at this moment in the civilized world, 
arises simply from people not understanding the 
actual necessity of work, not knowing that produce 
or wealth is eternally connected by the laws of 
heaven and earth with resolute labor. People are 
trying to find some way to cheat or change this ever¬ 
lasting law of life, and to be warm where they have 
not woven, and reap where they have not sown. 
A certain quantity of work is necessary to produce a 
certain quantity of good, of any kind whatever. If 
you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, 
you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil 



f 


PHILOSOPHY OF LABOR. 68g 

for it. But men do not acknowledge this law, or 
strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowledge, and 
food, and pleasure for nothing; and in this effort 
they either fail of getting them and remain ignorant 
and miserable, or they obtain them by making other 
men work for their benefit, which is the grossest 
tyranny and robbery. This century has brought 
immense progress in many things useful to mankind, 
but one of its serious evils is that we look so care¬ 
lessly upon dishonesty, heartlessness, and cruelty in 
the pursuit of wealth. It is time that we learn the 
lesson borne in this mistake, confess the error, and 
correct the evil. 

History covers nearly six thousand years, and dur¬ 
ing all that time the race of man has been coming 
up through the pain and error of mistakes, and the 
joy and victory of discovered truth to a more per¬ 
fect existence. The occupations of men to-day are 
capable of offering greater chances for long, com¬ 
fortable and mutually useful lives than ever before. 
The opportunities of the present for each human 
being to gain valuable information, to learn and to 
know the nature of the world he lives in, the nature 
of himself and his proper business in the world, and 
his highest, best and most probable destiny here¬ 
after, were never equaled in any age or any country. 
The recent vast improvements in battling against 
disease and untimely death; the great conquest of 
natural forces, bringing them into the service of 
man; and above all the rapidly widening field of 
44 


69O THE WORLD OF WORK. 

general knowledge, perfected science and assured 
truth which underlies all and includes all true prog¬ 
ress, fills us with mingled feelings of reverence and 
awe. But let us not forget that man is a maker of mis¬ 
takes, and common prudence demands that a cautious 
watch be set for them. It were well to sometimes 
stop and inquire, “What are the mistakes of the 
present age ? ” 

There is one which seems the natural result of 
the excited and hot-blooded speed of our people 
to-day, and which is so closely connected with every 
stroke of labor of every sort that we cannot ap¬ 
proach the subject of man’s occupations without 
mentioning it. 'That mistake is the false feeling 
of heart toward the true beauty and use of work. 
Space will not permit a study of the false teachings 
which have paved the way for the errors that are 
now sapping the vital forces of society in this direc¬ 
tion. But we know that each man’s belief colors 
his daily life, — not his church creed, or his lack of 
a church creed, for these are shifted about like coats 
and cloaks, — not what he tells to the world as his 
belief, for he may never have put his views into 
words in his own mind even, though down in his 
heart of hearts, are the things he feels that he 
knows, and believes — these things shine out in his 
every act. When mankind has learned the evident 
lesson that every thing in scientific research points 
to the conclusion that our race is yet in its youth; 
that every man’s duty is to learn and profit by all 





PHILOSOPHY OF LABOR. 


69I 


his fellows have done before him, and in return to 
strive to his utmost to leave some work behind him 
which will make the world better for his having lived 
in it; that above all, this life is a training-school for 
a higher and purer life beyond, — with what changed 
hearts will men labor! Ah, what a joy there is to 
the humble laborer, who feels assured that he is a 
necessary link in the great chain, and that the world 
would be poorer without him ! Who feels the debt 
of sweet gratitude for what has been done by others 
for his welfare, and is anxious to repay it by giving 
some good of his own to the future — who hears the 
progress of all the ages whispering in his ear: 
“ Brother, do your work nobly and well, nobly and 
well!” Who is thrilled, and calmed, and strengthened 
by the grand inspiration of an immortal life! Let no 
man or woman come to the choice and pursuit of an 
occupation for life without knowing and feeling some¬ 
thing of the depth and breadth, the true grandeur 

1 

and nobility of labor. 

Admitting the truth which appears in man’s organi¬ 
zation as well as in the study of every branch of 
nature, that honest work is a constant necessity with 
every human being, there still remains the question, 
“What kind of work shall I do?” 






IRST ®UESTIO^S. 



NE important truth commands our attention 
here. It is this : The world owes everyone, 
instead of a living, a chance to earn a living; 
but never by shiftless, thoughtless labor. In¬ 
telligence and skill are forever necessary to 
the laborer’s own personal good, and we find 
in harmony with this fact, that intelligence 
and skill are most in demand and most hon¬ 
ored everywhere. Intelligence and skill,— 

let these words dwell in o 4 r minds always, 

«• 

for we are all laborers, and have one grand 
aim in view, and that is, the highest, completest good. 

The very first step toward intelligent work is a study 
of myself, my weak points and my strong ones, my 
tastes and facilities for engaging in any certain branch 
of labor. I have been told again and again about five- 
cornered plugs that fell into round holes and were 
always a misfit, and about a good carpenter being 
wasted in the making of a poor preacher, and the bad 
farmer, who might have been a good salesman; but the 
advisers always stop short of telling me what my calling 
in life was. So, too, your parents or your friends may 
advise you, the childish fancies of early youth may weigh 
upon you, or the caprice of accidental influences may 

turn your mind toward a certain line in life; but none 

692 



































FIRST QUESTIONS. 693- 

of these should supersede your own intelligent and 
closely studied choice. 

I he importance of a thorough knowledge of self 
has been already dwelt upon (see page 437), and with¬ 
out it, surely no intelligent choice can be made. The 
advice of friends deserves a courteous and respectful 
hearing, for they love us and wish us well; but their 
influence over our choice will depend upon our confi¬ 
dence in their thorough knowledge of human nature, 
their general wisdom and experience, and their oppor¬ 
tunities to judge of our own peculiarities and abilities. 
Then, also, the fancies of childhood are not to be 
slighted entirely. Study them closely, and see whence 
they came; whether caused by accident or whether 
springing up out of our natures. If the latter, then 
they may be guiding straws showing us which way the 
undercurrents of our nature run. This study of self is 
a life-task, and we should constantly make or change 
our plans to secure the greatest efficiency. A failure 
in any calling, or two failures, or twenty failures, should 
not discourage us, but send us with renewed vigor to 
the study of ourselves, and the outward circumstances 
with which we have to deal. There is an unspeakable 
joy and self-satisfaction in doing the work that har¬ 
monizes with our tastes, and with our supreme aim in 
life, and that we feel to be fitted for by nature,—a joy 
too few of us ever realize. 

Keeping in view all that has appeared in the 
earlier pages of this book upon the elements of 
human nature, and the proper functions and use of 



694 


FIRST QUESTIONS. 


those elements; and in the realm of man’s duty, as 
outlined on page 369 and treated in detail thereafter, 
we now analyze the question : “ What kind of work 
shall I do?” and find that it resolves itself into four 
other questions. 


1. What are the elements of man’s nature, and what 
ones are most prominent in myself? 


The four questions. 


2. What business or work will call for the use of my 

strong points, and give me a chance to develop 
other points in my character which need to be 
improved ? 

3. What are the opportunities offered by the business 

for being useful to others, for making my fellow- 
beings happy, and for constantly improving and 
perfecting my own being in all its parts? 

4. What are the chances afforded to honestly earn and 

insure a comfortable living for myself and those 
depending upon me ? * 


Like Columbus, whose ambition was to explore 
the unknown seas ; or like Elias Howe, who devoted 
years to inventing the sewing machine, you may 
have some laudable project to carry out or noble 
ambition you wish to realize, and which will be 
greatly aided by the power of money. If so, the 
fourth question would also include the chances for 
getting the money needed for the latter purpose. 

I am aware that the fourth question, that of the 
chances for money making, is generally considered 
worthy of the first attention by many who pride 
themselves on being practical. But is there not 
danger of getting so intensely practical as to over¬ 
shoot the mark ? Money getting is not naturally, 
and never dares to become, the first aim in life. 




®CCUPATIONS OF fllAFIKIND. 


ANALYSIS. 

T would be a most interesting study to 
trace the history of man from the earliest 
ages down to the present, and see how 
each different line of business arose. We 
would see how those tribes of men which 
remain in a savage or half civilized state 
have very few forms of labor, each indi¬ 
vidual supplying his own wants with but 
little assitance from his neighbors. On the 
other hand, wherever there was an increase 
of knowledge, schools, colleges and of 
books; an increase of means for rapid 
traveling and rapid communication of 
thought, of comfortable clothing and houses, 
of regular and plentiful supplies of good 
food, of all the things which constitute civilization, 
there was also a constantly increasing division of 
labor. We would see one man or set of men, giving 
their entire time to some particular line of work, and 
depending upon others for other things necessary to 
their welfare. No one person lives within himself. 
The architect and the carpenter give their whole 

time to the work of supplying good houses and 

695 


























696 


OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 


strong walls and bridges, and while they are about 
that, the farmer gives himself wholly to the task of 
raising grain that in the end both may have better 
houses, safer highways, and better supplies of food 
than would otherwise be possible. 

It is easy to see why money was invented. Sup¬ 
pose the carpenter has built a house for the farmer 
and desires to remove at once to another state, or 

has a large supply of food already on hand, it would 

not be convenient for him to take his pay in grain, 

but if the farmer can pay him in such a thing as 

money, the carpenter can put his entire summer’s 
work, as it were, in his pocket, and save it till he 
needs food, or can carry it to a distant neighborhood 
and there give it to another farmer in exchange for 
his needed supplies, and this farmer in turn can 
retain the money to pay for any sort of service he 
may need. In this extremely simple manner grad¬ 
ually arose all the great world of business around 
us, and it were well to never lose sight of two things 
which are plainly shown in the statement: First, the 
simple nature and proper use of money as shown in 
its origin; second, the fact that all kinds of legiti¬ 
mate labor are in close sympathy with each other, 
therefore a damage to one form of labor will sooner 
or later prove a damage to other forms; and that 
no labor is legitimate or honorable unless it yields a 
certain and distinct benefit to humanity. 

The prejudice which holds certain lines of work 
to be more honorable or more respectable than 


ANALYSIS. 


697 

others, does not confine itself by any means to the 
drawing of a line between those professions which 
are supposed to favor a life of culture, and those 
professions which do not. The idea seems quite a 
common one, that it is in some way more respectable 
to sell goods over a counter than to follow a 
mechanical pursuit; or, in general terms, that those 
avocations which may be followed in fine clothes, are 
more dignified than those which may not. That 
these distinctions are not founded in justice, reason 
or common sense, becomes very plain the moment 
we try to trace them to their origin. Yet these very 
errors mar many lives which, with more wisdom, 
might be useful and true ones. 

Before proceeding with the analysis of the occu¬ 
pations of mankind, the reader is reminded of the 
two distinct and separate kinds of labor in which he 
may engage. These are mental labor, and bodily, or 
as it is usually called, manual, labor. But these.forms 
generally intermingle in various degrees in almost any 
sort of work, though certain kinds of labor call for 
a strength of muscle and body which some men do not 
possess, while there are achievements which spring 
forth from a completeness of mental power and a 
refinement of spiritual inspiration which can be found 
only in the person of genius. 

It is true that the man whose mental work is 
pure reasoning, does not do any manual labor to 
complete his task, and his bodily exertions need be 

for healthful exercise only; but there is no manual 

* 


6 9 8 


OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 


labor, however simple, that can be well done without 
the thoughtful attention of the worker, and the rule 
is general that the more thought expended by the 
laborer upon his task, the better the work will be done 
in the end. This fact is in harmony with the law 
of man’s nature, that his highest good is always in 
the direction of mental growth and improvement. 


' In Agriculture. 


The Occupations 
of Mankind. 


In Manufacture 
and the Me¬ 
chanical Arts. 


In Commerce. 


r Farmers. 

Gardeners. 

Planters. 

Graziers. 

Clothing, Cloth and Furniture Makers. 
Builders. 

Food Preparers. 

Vehicle Makers. 

Printers and Bookbinders. 

Machine and Implement Makers. 

Wholesale Dealers. 

Retail Dealers. 

Middle Men. 


In Mining. 


f Of Precious Metals. 

Of Base Metafs and Fuel Substances. 

Philosophers, Authors, and Inventors, 
f Of Schools. 

Teachers. \ Of Morals and Religion. 


In the Learned 
Professions. - 


[ Lecturers and Editors. 


Persons devoted to the Theory or the 
Practice of Medicine. 

Persons engaged in the Administration of 
Law and Justice. 

' Musicians. 

In the Fine Arts. - Painters. 

[ Sculptors. 



















THE AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS. 



'The Agricultural Pursuits. 

Agricultural pursuits include ail the ways of drawing 
a livelihood directly from Mother Earth, either as a 
gatherer or cultivator of grains or fruits, or as a tender 
of herds that feed upon the pastures. There are, of 
course, many people making specialties of particular 
branches, but the common farmer engages more or less 
in every detail of agricultural work. 

The business of farming was once regarded as a 
profession easy to be understood and requiring but 
little preparation for its successful practice. But it has 
come to be viewed in a very different and much wiser 
light. It requires an intimate and practical knowledge 
of all the arts of cultivation and management as well as 
the nature and value of every kind of live stock, and 
still further, a perfect acquaintance with the different 
modes of buying and selling, and the constant varying 
state of the different markets. 

It has been justly said, that no business requires 
more talents, perseverance and careful observation than 
the cultivation of the soil. The successful farmer 
should be a chemist, a botanist, a machinist, a geol¬ 
ogist, and a good financier. 

Well did Washington say, “Agriculture is the most 
healthful, the most useful, and the most noble employ¬ 
ment of man.” The various branches of farming and 
stock raising make an employment which is unsur¬ 
passed for promoting health, strength and vigor. Agri- 


700 OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 

culture is the basis of wealth and prosperity. The 
happiest and most independent people are the tillers 
of the soil. They have as great returns from their 
labor, and have more leisure time for enjoyment and 
self-cultivation than any other class of people in the 
world. 

In all ages, great honor has been paid to agriculture. 
Seven-eighths of the people in every country are dis¬ 
ciples of the plow. Nearly all our statesmen, ora¬ 
tors, ministers, historians, poets, and nearly every 
man of great renown or wealth sprang from a child¬ 
hood of country life. As children, they dropped corn 
in planting time, they drove cattle to the fields, they 
rode the horses to the brook, they hunted the mow for 
the nest, and they toiled hard in the harvest field. 
And not one of them but remembers these early years 
with pride. 

Grand as the mighty workshops of the nation are, 
the stupendous steam engine manufactures, the im¬ 
mense machine works, the vast warehouses teeming 
with the triumphs of mechanical labor, great railways 
bearing their gigantic burdens across the land, grand 
as are all these, they are practically of trivial import* 
ance compared with a great life of a nation, which lies 
in the warming bosom of its soil. From the latter, the 
means of existence must come, for if the soil was 
rendered barren, the nation itself would crumble to 
decay, its workshops tumble to the ground, and its 
great highways grow up with weeds. 

The person who is contemplating the choice of 


THE AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS. 70 1 

means to earn a living, and to progress in the line he 
has chosen for his inner life, and is busy with the four 
questions presented on page 694, may read with inter¬ 
est the following studies of agricultural life. 

» 

STUDIES OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE. 

The cultivation of the earth is the natural employ¬ 
ment of man. It is upon the farm that virtue 
should thrive best, that the body and mind should 
be developed the most healthfully, that temptations 
should be the weakest, that social intercourse'should 
be the simplest and sweetest, that beauty should 
thrill the soul with the finest raptures, and the life 
should be tranquilest in its flow, longest in its 
period, and happiest in its passage and its issues. 
This is the general and the first ideal of the farmer’s 
life, based upon the nature of the farmer’s calling 
and a universally recognized human want. Why in 
so many cases does the actual differ so widely from 
the ideal ? A general answer to this question is, 
that that is made an end of life which should be 
but an incident or means. Life is confounded with 
too much hard labor; and selfish success is the aim 
to which all other aims are subordinate. There is 
no fact better established than that hard labor fol¬ 
lowed from day to day and year to year, absorbing 
every thought and every physical energy has the 
direct tendency to depress the Intellect, blunt the 
Sensibilities, and animalize the man. In such a life 
all the energies of the brain and nervous system are 


7 02 


OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 


directed to the support of nutrition and the stimu¬ 
lation of the muscular system. Man thus becomes a 
beast of burden, and though he may add barn to 
barn, acre to acre, he does not lead a life which 
rises in dignity above that of the beasts which drag 
his plow. He eats, he works, he sleeps. Surely 
there is no dignity in a life like this. There is 
nothing attractive and beautiful and good in it. It 
is a mean, contemptible life ; all its associations and 
objects are repulsive to a mind which apprehends 
life’s true enjoyments and ends. It is a pestilent 
perversion. It is a sale of the soul to the body. 
It is turning the back upon the true life, upon 
growth, upon God, and descending in to animalism. 
The true ideal of the farmer’s life — of any life — 
contemplates something outside of, and above, the 
calling which is its instrument. No man should 
limit his own knowledge to the limits of his calling — 
there are realms of thought and enjoyment beyond 
this. The farmer’s life is no better than the life of a 
street-sweeper, if it rise no higher than mere farmer’s 
work. If the farmer, standing under the broad sky, 
breathing the pure air, listening to the songs of 
birds, watching the progress of “the great miracle 
that still goes on ” working the transformation of 
brown seeds which he drops in the soil into fields 
of green and gold, does not apprehend that his 
farm has higher uses for him than those of feeding 
his person and his purse, he might as well dwell 
in a coal mine. Money getting should not be the 





STUDIES OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE. 703 

highest aim, the chief end of the farmer. Labor is 
essential — but exclusive devotion to labor fourteen 
hours every day of the year means both physical 
and mental wreck. 

One-half of our farmers are physically and intel¬ 
lectually gentlemen ; they are handsome, courageous, 
possess fine instincts, brilliant imaginations, courtly 
manners, and fine mental force. The other half of 
our farmers are ugly, of stunted stature and pug¬ 
nacious ; and they produce children like themselves. 
They live in cramped houses, where the women toil 
incessantly from the time they rise till the time they 
go to bed at night. Such farmers believe that work 
is the great thing — that efficiency in work is the 
crowning excellence of manhood — they glory above 
all things in brute strength and brute endurance — 
their homes are unloved and unlovable things, and 
as soon as the son gets a taste of better life and a 
worthier style of existence, what inducements can 
retain him ? He hates the farm, and flees from it 
at the first opportunity. 

Every person should be proud of his business. 
Farmers should educate their children to cultivate 
the soil and they must make their business easier so 
their children will not hate it. The boy must not be 
taught that tilling the soil is a curse and almost a 
disgrace; they must not suppose that education is 
thrown aways upon children who are to spend their 
lives in the profession of farming. It must be under¬ 
stood that education is just as essential and can be 



;o 4 


OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 


used to as great an advantage on the farm as in any 
other line of life. 

Farmers should raise their sons to be independent 
through labor, to pursue the business for themselves 
and upon their own account, to be self-reliant, to 
act upon their own responsibilities and take the conse¬ 
quences like men. Teach them above all things how 
to become good honest citizens, to make true and 
tender husbands, to be winners of love and builders 
of homes. Give your sons and daughters every advan¬ 
tage within your power. In the balmy air of kindness 
they will grow about you like flowers, they will fill 
your homes with sunshine and all your days with 
gladness. 

Farmers’ wives can do much to facilitate the 
progress of their Husbands by taking charge of the 
household duties, pleasures and comforts. A healthy 
home, presided over by a thrifty and cleanly woman, 
may be the abode of comfort, of virtue and of happi¬ 
ness. It may be the scene of every ennobling relation 
of life. It may be endeared to man by many delightful 
memories, by the affectionate voices of wife and 
children. Such a home will be the training ground 
of childhood, a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from 
trouble, a sweet resting place after labor, a consolation 
in sorrow, a pride in success and a joy at all times. 
Mothers, wives, sisters, remember you are the cher- 
ishers of infancy, the instructors of childhood, the 
guides and counsellors of youth, the confidants and 
companions of manhood. 


STUDIES OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE. 705 

Another cause which has tended to the deteriora¬ 
tion of the farmers life is its loneliness. It is difficult 
to determine why isolation produces the effect it does 
upon human development. The man who plants him¬ 
self and his wife in a forest, will generally become a 
coarse man and raise coarse children. The lack of 
the social element in the farmer’s life is doubtless 
a cause of some of its most repulsive characteristics. 
Men are constituted in such a manner that constant 
social contact is necessary to the healthfulness of their 
sympathies, the quickness of their intellects and the 
symmetrical development of their powers. It matters 
little whether a family be placed in the depths of 
a western forest or upon the top of an eastern hill: 
the result of solitude will be the same in kind if not 
in degree. Farmers who seldom go into society, who 
seldom dine with their neighbors, or who take no 
genuine satisfaction in the company of visitors, are 
not men among men and women,— intellectually they 
are very apt to leave life where they began it. 
Socially they become dead. The farmers life and 
home can never be what they should be, attractive 
and lovable, until they become more social. The 
tree that springs in the open field, though it be fed 
by juices of a thousand acres, will present a hard 
and stunted growth, while the little sapling of the 
forest, seeking for life among a million roots, or 
growing in a crevice of a rock, will lift to the light 
its cap of leaves upon a graceful stem and whisper 
even-headed, with the stateliness of its neighbors. 


45 



7 06 OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 

Men, like trees, were made to grow together, and 
both history and philosophy declare that this divine 
intention cannot be ignored or frustrated with 
impunity. 

Traditional routine has also operated powerfully 
to diminish the attractiveness of farming. This cause 
grows less powerful from year to year. He has his 
life among the most beautiful scenes of nature and 
the most interesting facts of science. What is intel¬ 
ligent farming but a series of experiments ? What 
is a farm but a laboratory where the most important 
and interesting scientific problems are solved? The 
moment that any field becomes intelligently experi¬ 
mental, that moment routine ceases and that field 
becomes attractive. The most repulsive things under 
heaven become attractive, on being invested with 
a scientific interest. All, therefore, that a farmer has 
to do to reduce the traditional routine of his method 

and hks labor, is to become a scientific farmer. 

♦ 

He will then have an interest in his labor and its 

results, above their utilities. Labor that does not 

engage the mind has no dignity, else the ox and 

the ass are kings in the world, and we are younger 

brothers in the royal family. So we say to every 

» 

farmer, if you would make your calling attractive to 
yourself and your sons, seek that knowledge which 
will break up routine and make your calling to yourself 
and to them, an intelligent pursuit. 

Another fact which we cannot but regard as one 
among the many causes which have conspired to 


STUDIES OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE. JOJ 

despoil the farmer’s calling of some of its legitimate 
attractions, is the lack of any kindred sentiments of 
pride in landed property and family affection for the 
parental homestead. Most of our landholders will 
sell their homesteads as readily as they will their 
horses. Very likely the father has rooted up all home 
attachments by talking of removing westward ever 
since the boy saw the light. There should be a love 
and ambition for proprietorship. Where landed 
property is handed down for generations, there is 
generally to be found charming intelligence and the 
politest culture. 

The contaminating influences of illiterate and 
debased help is one of the most evil things to 
which farmers’ children are subject. Such associations 
are most degrading. Where hired help is needed, 
those should be chosen whose moral characters are 
unquestionable and whose associations are pure and 
elevating. 

There is another great cause which has been a 
serious drawback to farming life, which cannot be 
recovered from in many years. An inquiry at the 
doors of the great majority of our farmers, would 
exhibit the general fact that the brightest boys have 
become mechanics, or have gone to college, or are 
teaching- school, or are in trade. The best material 
have been sifted out and have slid away. There have 
been taken directly out of our farming population 
its best elements, its quickest intelligence, its most 
stirring enterprise, its noblest and most ambitious 


708 


OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 


natures — precisely those elements which are necessary 
to elevate the standard of the farmer’s calling and 
make it what it should be. 

It is very easy to see why these men have not 
been retained in the past; it is safe to predict that 
they will not be retained in the future, unless a 
thorough reform be instituted. 

These men cannot be kept on a routine farm, or 
tied to a home which has no higher life that a work¬ 
shop or a boarding house. It is not because the 
work of the farm is hard that men shun it. They 
will work harder and longer in other callings for the 
sake of a better style of individual and social life. 
They will go to the city and cling to it while half 
starving, rather than engage in the dry details and 
hard and homely associations of the life which they 
forsook. The boys are not the only members of 
the farmer’s family that flee from a farmer’s life. 
The most intelligent and the most interprising of the 
farmer’s daughters become school teachers, tenders 
of stores, or factory girls. They contemn the calling 
of their father, and will, nine times out of ten, marry 
a mechanic in preference to a farmer. They know 
that marrying a farmer is very serious business. 
They remember their worn-out mothers. They thor¬ 
oughly understand that the vow that binds them in 
marriage to a farmer, seals them to a severe and 
homely service, that will end only in death. The 
farmer needs more new ideas, more and better imple¬ 
ments. A process of regenerations must begin in 



STUDIES OF AGRICULTURAL LIFE. 709 

the mind. The farmer must be proprietor of the 
soil he cultivates. His house should be the home 
of hospitality, the embodiment of solid comfort and 
liberal taste, the theater of an exalted family life 
which shall be the master and not the servant of 
labor, and the central sun of a bright and social 
atmosphere. When this standard shall be reached, 
there will be no fear of agriculture. The noblest 
race of men and women the sun ever shone upon 
will cultivate these valleys and slopes, and they will 
cling to a life which blesses them with health, plenty, 
individual development, and social progress and hap¬ 
piness. This is what the farmer’s life may be and 
should be ; and if it ever rises to this in America, 
no other line of life can entice her children away, 
and waste land will become as scarce at last as 
vacant lots in Paradise. 

Human life will stand in the fore-ground of such 
a home,— human life crowned with dignities and 
graces,— while animal life will be removed among 
the shadows, and the gross material utilities, taste¬ 
fully disguised, will be made to retire into an unof¬ 
fending and harmonious perspective. There is no 
sweeter way to live than in the quiet country, away 
from the treacherous race for power and money. 
Surrounded by pleasant fields of growing corn and 
ripening wheat, among kind, faithful neighbors, in a 
cozy and comfortable cottage with vines twining over 
the door and windows, and grapes growing purple 
in the kisses of the sun, amidst the perfume of 




710 OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 

beautiful flowers and the merry songs of birds, 
where husband is loving his wife, and wife is lov¬ 
ing her husband, and the dimpled arms of children 
are playing around the necks of both. There let 
life flow on in deep and untroubled serenity,— let 
joy and love reign supreme. 

.Manufactures, Commerce and Mining. 

The tendency of all civilized society toward that 
division of labor which puts one man to work at one 
thing and another at some other necessary task, has 
been already mentioned. The advantage of organized 
society, allowing each to give his undivided attention 
to the study and perfection of some one special work, 
is almost beyond calculation ; yet people, in engaging 
in a business, seldom think of this matter, and of the 
relation they or their work bears toward the rest of 
mankind. Manufacture, skilled labor, commerce and 
mining, are so closely related, and the persons engaged 
in one are so often called upon to take more or less of 
a share in work common to all, that we cannot well con¬ 
sider them separately. The manufacturer is generally 
more or less a commercial man, for he must find cus¬ 
tomers to buy his wares. He must be a good solicitor, 
for he must enlist the aid of others in making his goods 
and in placing those goods into the hands of the con¬ 
sumers. He needs a fair knowledge of the true nature 
and worth of the work done by every skilled artisan he 
employs. It is perhaps fair to say that the successful 


MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE AND MINING. 71 I 

manufacturer needs more general information and a 
broader power of mind than does the man who is 
engaged with some minor division of the work. 

The person engaged in trade alone is filling a very 
useful field in society. His great study is, first, to know 
the true wants of the public ; second, to find ways of 
supplying those wants satisfactorily, while securing for 
himself an honest profit as pay for his services. 

The business of mining the precious metals never 
received the attention of any large share of human 
beings. It is usually full of personal danger, moral as 
well as physical, for the man is slow to understand the 
difference which really exists between drawing a lump 
of gold out of a mountain, or drawing it across a gam¬ 
bling table. By far the largest amount of all kinds of 
mining is done by mining companies, who employ 
laborers at stated wages, when the whole business 
becomes of the same nature as manufacturing, and 
should be thought about in the same way. 

Along with every line of work must lie the lives 
of hundreds of worthy-hearted people, who lack the 
ability, or the training, or the capital, or the oppor¬ 
tunity to be other than salaried workers. Indeed, 
many of the most skilled artizans are, from the nature 
of their business, workers for stated wages. The worst 
feature in a life of this sort is the discontent which 
arises from false views of life, and sometimes takes 
possession of the mind. Every salaried laborer should 
remember that the head of the business who pays his 
wages is also governed by a master whose rules are 


712 OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 

inexorable. Circumstances which cannot be controlled 
very often mold that business. Then there is, in the 
commonest laborer, and the poorest life, so long as it is 
honorable and is pointing its way onward and upward, 
a nobility as true and as pure as can ever adorn the 
lives of those who fill a broader sphere. The toiler 
may have worked hard and earnestly all day long, and 
at evening an error forfeited him his wages. That 
night his thoughts might have been discouraging had 
he not remembered that his experience was valuable for 
the next day if he chose to study it closely, and beside 
this, the very weariness of body, and the hardship and 
toil of the day, are noble in themselves, and are ever 
the fruitful soil of greatness. 

Let laborers in every branch of life remember the 
steps which lead to higher and better tasks. First is 
intelligence, then energy, then strength, then experi¬ 
ence,— cultivate them all while life lasts, for out of 
these grow tact and skill, and all honorable advance¬ 
ment. 



This term is used in the analysis to include all those 
occupations which are mainly characterized by mental 
work, and which cannot usually be engaged in without 
a broad and thorough general information, and a more 
or less careful and lengthy special training of the mind. 
These are, in some respects, the highest callings to 
which any one can aspire; high, not because the labor 
is any more respectable, but because of the difficulty 



THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 713 

and the responsibility of it. There is a false notion 
common in the minds of some that these occupations 
are more honorable than others, and it has unduly 
swayed many a person in choosing a course in life. We 
have, perhaps, sometimes honored successful profes¬ 
sional people more than good taste or good judgment 
should really sanction, but the world is rapidly near¬ 
ing the time when in every case, it will be the true 
strength and perfection of manhood and womanhood, 
and the actual work done, that will alone command 
the homage of men. 

The reader who is examining the nature and 
scope of the learned professions, either with the 
view of entering some one of them, or for the sake 
of understanding and appreciating them, will pause 
with reverence at the mention of the names of such 
philosophers as St. Paul, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 
Gallileo, Kepler, Bacon, Newton, and all the more 
recent men who have devoted whole lives to delving 
in the depths of knowledge and searching after new 
truths; men who looked upon all there is of money,, 
and of fine living, and of worldly riches and honor 
as but the merest dross, compared with the match¬ 
less beauty and solace of truth. Christ himself, as 
a man, was a philosopher. These stand already in 
the near presence of Divinity, and turn their eager 
eyes ever toward the home of ultimate truth, d hen 
there are the authors, who write books that truth 
may be recorded and the world instructed; and the 
author will be found to be something of a philoso- 


714 OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 

pher as well, else his wonderful powers of observa¬ 
tion would not yield him many thoughts worth 
recording. A patient and long-suffering worker is 
the inventor, who studies all the laws governing a 
problem that he may discover some means of sur¬ 
mounting an obstacle, or place some new and useful 
powe. into the hands of men. 

Probably the most responsible positions of all are 
those of the teachers or educators, who, either in the 
school - room or through the columns of the news¬ 
paper and magazine, or in the lecture hall or the 
pulpit, teach the world what it shall think and 
feel They are moulders of public opinion. They 
stand receiving from philosophers the bread of truth 
and wisdom, and breaking it up and dispensing it 
among the hungering multitude. 

It is perhaps true that the practice of medicine 
has more of real bodily labor and hardship in it 
than any other profession classed along with mental 
labor. The true physician was led into his call¬ 
ing by sympathy with his fellow-man, and having 
devoted his life to the relief of pain and suffering 
he never hesitates while his strength lasts to hasten 
to the spot where his services are needed. For this 
he sacrifices every personal comfort, if necessary. 
His pay is generally liberal, but never can be as 
much as he really deserves ; and were it not for the 
deep and genuine gratitude yielded him from the 
heart of the saved sufferer, his life would sometimes 
be a weary one. His work, if followed to its ulti- 


I 


THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 715 

mate end, will carry him up past the practice of his 
art into the region of theory, the investigation of the 
most profound laws of nature and life, that he may 
discover more surely the true laws of health and the 
prevention and cure of disease. 

The legal profession has been much abused; but 
whether abused most by an ignorant public or its own 
unworthy members, would perhaps be difficult to say. 
Law and justice are so great, so grand, so deep and 
broad, and divine, that men cannot easily understand 
them, or appreciate their dignity. No doubt the heart 
of every young student at law swells with enthusiasm 
occasionally, but tasks grow hum-drum, and he falls at 
last into a common-place life, and drags all he knows 
of the profession with him. There is no disputing 
the fact that this calling has far more followers than 
it needs or can find any use for; and this is true 
in regard to almost all the occupations of this class. 
The common practice of school teachers and parents of 
leading all the most intellectual children, to think that 
no life is so worthy and honorable as the “ learned 
professions,” is one of the most outrageous evils 
of the day. It leads many a worthy young life to 
bitter disappointment and a fruitless despair. 

In the fine arts, music, painting and sculpture, a 
limited number of people find an inspiration which 
renders their toil happy, ‘ and an occupation which 
brings them all 1 the rewards which follow honorable 
labor. The law : of the beautiful in forms and colors 
has in later years been carried into almost all branches 


yi 6 OCCUPATIONS OF MANKIND. 

of practical life. Every article that we use, from the 
plow or the farm-wagon to the delicate fabrics that 
clothe our wives and daughters, is made as handsome 
as the nature of its use will allow. And this is well. 
Beauty, so long as it is natural, and does not interfere 
with true and proper use, yields a refining influence 
upon our lives. But that art which cultivates the beau¬ 
tiful for the mere sake of beauty, is unnatural and 
demoralizing. And that art which allows itself to 
present beauty so chosen and arranged that it will 
draw men toward the animal and the sensual side of 
their nature, is at once debasing and contemptible. 
There is room here, and, indeed, a powerful demand, 
for genius to come to the rescue of an influence that 
ought always be in harmony with the highest good 
of mankind. Pure civilization and true progress is 
calling loudly, almost piteously, upon the great musi¬ 
cians, painters and sculptors, to cease molding their 
ideals upon the patterns and the conceptions that 
sprang up in an age when the world was ignorant of 
many things, and peculiarly vicious in many others. 
The ancient Greeks and Romans, in their latter days 
of luxury, their Oriental neighbors and descendants, 
were people who, as a class, held feasting, sensu¬ 
ality, riotous pleasure and idle basking in summer’s 
soft breezes and sunshine to be the highest possible 
enjoyment either kings or commoners could attain. 
Can the art that was fostered in such an age, that 
grew out of such a life, be in true harmony with 
our age whose higher inspiration is “Work,” and 


THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 


717 


whose watchword is that grand word, “Duty”? Shall 
we take the art that was'"'conceived to heighten such 
coarse, licentious pleasures as those'-into our homes 
of to-day, to cheer our lives, to breathe its spirit 
upon our wives and daughters, to add strength and 
purity to the growth of our sons? The thought is 
revolting. Who will be the ones to immortalize 
their names by filling the modern world with pure 
conceptions of music, painting and sculpture, in har- 

9 

mony with our higher and nobler ideals of life ? 

The branch of mind most called into play by the 
artist, is imagination (pages 129 to 142). The mental 
qualification most needed in any of the occupations, 
however, is apparent to every thoughtful reader, 
especially with the hints that are continually given 
throughout the various analyses of the elements of 
mind in all our earlier pages. 











jlO.NEY Ah KING. 



®L_ 

'^GvTT^ 





,HE common multitude seem to be busy 
with the two aims: first, to get money; 
second, to prove to their neighbors that 
they have it. The shame and the mis¬ 
chief of the case among us is in the inor- 
dinate greed, the universal scramble for 
money, not for its proper uses, but for 
selfish or vulgar misuses of it. We are a 
nation of money seekers, — not from the 
miserly avarice which gathers and hoards 
it merely for its own sake, but for the 
sake of the homage it secures, the power 
or influence it gives, or the rivalry with 
others in ostentatious display which the 
extravagant expenditure of it enables one 
to maintain. We are terribly a nation of money- 
seekers for these and the like selfish and compara¬ 
tively ignoble ends, with scarcely a thought or a 
desire of becoming able to do good and promote 

the welfare of society, actuating and sanctifying the 
eager, incessant struggle after riches. This is the 

shame. And the mischief is not only in the lower¬ 
ing effect on the spirit of the people and on the 
tone of social life (which is both cause and effect 

718 




















NATURE AND USE OF MONEY. - 719 

of extravagant expenditure and coarse, “showy” 
rivalry,) but in the reckless gambling disposition, 
the unscrupulousness, the shipwreck of integrity and 
honor, the defalcations and falseness to trusts, the 
dishonesties and frauds, that are engendered in this 
intense selfish struggle after great and quick-gained 
riches. We are going, morally, the road downward 
with tremendous accelerating velocity, and where 
shall we come ? Pandemonium was built and paved 
with molten gold. 

NATURE AND USE OF MONEY. 

We have seen how the need for money arose, 
and its proper use in life. (Page 696.) Now 
since worth, or value has thus, by the common 
consent of mankind, been concentrated and com¬ 
pressed into the small space of a bit of metal or 
a strip of paper, it has become possible to hold 
the fruit of a whole years labor of a thousand 
men like a feather between the thumb and fingers. 
Money is concentrated force and power, and it is 
little wonder that the pursuit of money has finally 
grown into an absorbing passion with mankind. 
(See 296.) It will be noticed that the value of 
money is changeable. If I must do a third more 
work for a dollar now than was demanded last year, 
then the price of money has advanced one third; 
and if I have money, I can obtain with it one 
third more of service. Money is worth nothing 
beyond what it costs or what we can get for it. 


720 


MONEY MAKING. 


It must also be born in mind that money, like 
everything else, must be purchased with something; 
and whether we choose to have wealth or not, will 
depend upon what we are called upon to give for 
it. Professor Agassiz said: “ I have not time to 
make money,” and with all his ability to amass a 
fortune almost without an effort, he died, owning 
nothing except his liberty and a mortgaged home¬ 
stead. The making of money would have been 

very easy to him. His vast store of knowledge 
might have been turned into popular books and 
lectures, almost without labor, and money would 
have flowed into his lap. He had need of money, 
too, and could have used it to a better advantage 
than most men can. But he could not afford to 
buy it. The cost he must pay for it was time, 
and he felt that to be more precious than any¬ 

thing else. His hours were worth more than the 
money they could buy, and he being a wise man, 
refused to purchase at a price which he thought 
too high. The truth is, we are apt to be tempted 
to make more money than we can afford. We 
have, or ought to have, certain hopes and aspira¬ 
tions in life which are too dear to be sacrificed for 

money. As a general rule we cannot secure wealth 

and also accomplish any other important work in life, 
and we ought to make our choice in the start. 

Many continue to try to get wealth, and hope to 

get it, and even allow themselves to become un¬ 
happy when they fail to get it, though they are 


NATURE AND USE OF MONEY. 7 21 

all the time refusing to pay the necessary price for 
it. Every one must decide for himself how much 
money he can afford to make. 

This brings a man at once to another question, 
“How much money have I a right to make?” We 
all live in the enjoyment of many improvements 
wrought out for us by the faithful of the past, and 
the only way we can pay the debt is to bequeath 
to the future some worthy achievement of our own. 
Besides, we should choose that work for which 
nature has best fitted us. It is possible that the 
chief aim of our lives is one requiring money for 
its especial accomplishment. The nature of the aim 
will decide. Peter Cooper wished to found institutes 
and charities, and he gathered wealth for that pur¬ 
pose, but had Agassiz stopped to secure money his 
chosen work would have suffered. The general rule 
seems to be that it is each one’s duty to make 
money enough to supply the proper needs of life 
for himself and those depending upon him, and 
after that is done, it is his privilege to make as 
much more money as he can without interfering 
with the rights of others, or sacrificing his own 
nobler purposes. 

The salient points about money and money mak¬ 
ing may be summarized as follows: 

1. Money is nothing but a tool for the con¬ 
venience of mankind. 

2. Like any other commodity, it must be pur¬ 
chased, and its value varies under varying circum- 

46 


I 


722 MONEY MAKING. 

stances. We should beware of paying too high a 
price for it. 

3. Each person must find out the extent of his 
ability to make money, and then decide how much 
he can afford to make. . 

4. One’s duty to make money is marked by the 
amount necessary to secure the needs of life for 
himself and those depending on him. 

5. One’s privilege to make money is limited 
by the amount he can make without encroaching 
upon the rights and happiness of others, and with¬ 
out sacrificing the nobler aims and ends of his own 
life. 
























Aiding Influences. 


SUCCESSFUL SOLICITING. 

ERY few lines of business can be built to 
any magnitude, or even brought to a 
successful completion by the unaided efforts 
of one individual. We need at almost every 
step to enlist the sympathy or the aid of 
others. And even in the every day relations 
of family, friendship, and society, it is not 
enough that our wishes are pure and just: 
we need to present them in a manner 
that will most nearly secure all the attention and 
co-operation they deserve. 

We are all solicitors. Not only those who have 
trades to drive in a business way, but those who 
have bargains to make in the commonest social affairs, 
those who have a cause to champion, or have opinions 
they wish to spread among men. In every act of 
life where we persuade, ask, or influence another to 
anything, we stand for a moment under the common 
name, a solicitor. To be a good solicitor is to have 
in our hands one of the most potent powers in the 
world. 

If, in order to make a man act, or even believe, as 

we would have him, it were only necessary to convince 

723 
























7 2 4 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


his understanding, the task of carrying our points would 
be much more simple; logic and reason (pages 143 to 
178 and developed in “How to Think,” page 179) 
would be sufficient; but we are all beings of feelings 
and passions as well as of reason, and must be treated 
accordingly. Many a person who is granted to be 
skillful in argument never really accomplishes much. 
He convinces people, but he does not move them to 
act. Such arguers are supremely ignorant of the 
nature of the human mind, or else they simply neglect 
the fact that the road to the Will, where actions arise, 
does not lie through the Intellect alone, but through 
the Sensibilities as well. The really shrewd and suc¬ 
cessful solicitor chooses his arguments and presents 
them in such a way that almost every appeal to any 
branch of the understanding or Intellect (see analysis, 
page 66) strikes at the same time a responsive chord 
somewhere in the range of the feelings or Sensibilities 
(see analysis, page 254.) Daniel Webster in his 
famous speech at the Bunker Hill Monument, after 
numerous excellent arguments addressed to the Intel¬ 
lects of his hearers closes with the following appeal to 
their hearts: “ And when both we and our children 

shall have been consigned to the grave, may love of 
country and pride of country glow with equal fervor 
among those to whom our names and our blood shall 
have descended ! And then, when honored and decrepit 
age shall lean against the base of this monument, and 
troops of young people shall be gathered around it, 
and they speak together of its objects, the purposes of 


SUCCESSFUL SOLICITING. 725 

its construction, and recount the great and glorious 
events with which it is connected, there shall spring 
from every youthful heart the exclamation, ‘ Thank 
God, I — I also — am an American!’” Truly a most 
masterly stroke upon those chords of love of home, 
friends and country which exist in the hearts of all. 

But there is another extreme which is just as dan¬ 
gerous as a neglect of the Sensibilities, and that is try¬ 
ing to win a cause by appealing entirely to the hearts 
of people and neglecting their intelligence or Intellect. 
People induced to act without proper and sufficient 
reasons will regret their course and antagonize their 
adviser the moment they obtain better information, or 
have time for cool reflection. That lover who does not 
try to dwell forever in a vernal season of roses and 
sunshine, but who now and then suggets the practical 
summer-time of labor, an occasional stormy day, and 
an autumn of the well-earned harvests of life, will be 
most sure to win a sensible sweetheart; and when he 
has thus captured both the head and the heart he can 
feel the assurance of a conquest far more honorable 
and complete. 

A few persons have the taste or tact by nature of 
always presenting their plea in a manner which harmon¬ 
izes so fully with the natural and true method that they 
seldom fail in having an honorable request granted. 
People seem to fall in with their plans, and freely yield 
co them a hearty sympathy and aid. Nature makes a 
few such perfect solicitors, but their number is very 
small. We call such persons lucky, but there is a 




726 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


method and a law in their luck, even though they do 
not suspect it themselves. Let us analyze the solicitor’s 
work: 


1 

The Solicitor’s Work. - 


r 1. Securing a hearing,— a free and unprejudiced 
hearing, if possible. 

2. Presenting the project or plea, in its parts skill¬ 
fully, and as to its merits, justly and completely. 

3. Yielding honorable aid and information to assist 
^the solicited party in forming a decision. 


i. Securing a hearing .—The manufacturer, the farmer 
and the miner must find a market for their products. 
The dealer must both buy and sell. The teacher labors 
to secure the respectful attention of his learners, the 
preacher to command hearers, and the editor, the author, 
the lecturer, or the artist labors for years to make the 
public willing to hear him or to pause and look upon his 
work. It is not the salesman with his line of samples 
seeking an audience with a prospective customer that 
furnishes us the only or the best example. From the 
minister of the gospel laboring to lead a man to a higher 
life, the farmer competing for a premium that his stock 
may be advertised, the canvasser who joins hands with 
the author in securing readers for a new book, the pur¬ 
chaser of supplies for the manufacturer, the wife who is 
winning a husband’s acquiescence, the social or political 
leader of the smallest sort, down through every avenue 
of life, even to the little boot-black who seeks the 
groups of men resting leisurely in the quietest nooks of 
the hotel, where he can most surely secure a glance of 

recognition and a modicum of his heart’s desire,— all 

♦ 

are in one way or another “ securing a hearing.” 




SUCCESSFUL SOLICITING. 727 

The one chief point in this first step of the 
solicitor’s work is to have an unprejudiced hearing 
if possible; that is, his hearer’s mind should be 
entirely free from prejudice regarding the business, 
and have no opinions formed before hand concern¬ 
ing it. This is often very difficult to secure, but it 
should always be sought and attained as far as pos¬ 
sible. The merchant who from some slight cause con¬ 
cludes that the new customer coming in to-morrow is 
not a trustworthy man, and shall not receive much 
courtesy, is making a mistake which may loose him a 
good customer and do grave injustice to both. The 
wise advertiser seldom finds it advisable to so fully 
explain his business in the advertisement as to afford 
his prospective customers room to complete an opinion 
before he has a chance to talk further to them. The 
sinner who knows the hour when the divine adviser 
is coming, and the probable line of talk that will 
follow, is liable to imagine in advance what the inter¬ 
view shall be and close his ears, and harden his heart 
against both the messenger and the message. This 
is very wrong, of course. One of the first principles 
of law and justice is that we shall never pass an 
opinion upon a thing only thought about and not 
fairly examined, nor judge a man unheard. In every 
occupation, then, the person who at any moment 
becomes, in any sense, a solicitor, should use every 
honorable means to secure from the person approached 
an unprejudiced hearing. 

2. Presenting the project , or plea .— Here lies the 


728 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


largest part of the work. As solicitors, we need to 
know all the elements of human nature, both as it 
should be, and as it is. Our information must be 
perfect in general, and we must be able to judge 
the person we are talking to in particular. We 
should be so at home in this knowledge that we will 
act upon it almost without a thought, for there are 
always many minor circumstances to watch in an inter¬ 
view with even an old friend. In our work of influ¬ 
encing others to act, we must remember that a man 
may believe, and yet not act upon his belief. To 
influence his Will, it is necessary to influence the 
active principles of his nature. To win assent to 
a statement is easy enough, but to secure active 
co-operation is not so easy. To make a millionaire 
contribute liberally to a public charity, it is not 
enough to convince him that the object is a worthy 
one; it is necessary to make him feel its claims 
upon him. The only way to do this is to arouse his 
sympathy. 

The solicitor, then, must be full of sympathy; he 
must be able to feel himself, and to take others to 
the source of feeling; but there is a danger here 
of which every leader of public opinion should beware. 
Arousing a flood of feelings greater than the facts 
justify is very wrong. To say, “There must be a 
God because I love Him,” or to say, “That man 
is a rascal because I hate him,” is a kind of armament 
both silly and unjust. Yet impulsive people are guilty 
of it every day. Beware of extremes. Ignorant and 


SUCCESSFUL SOLICITING. 729 

uncultivated people give too much heed to the feelings, 
while the fault of the educated is that of neglecting 
the heart too much. As has already been said, the 
only true road to a proper and active influence over 
others, is through both the Intellect and the Sensi¬ 
bilities. To make the millionaire feel the claims of 
charity upon him in particular, he must be taken 
into the presence of the objects of the charity, or 
those objects must be presented before him so viv¬ 
idly that his mind grasps the picture, and his heart 
responds to its influence. 

To accomplish this latter task the solicitor needs, 
in addition to sympathy, a vivid imagination. These 
combined will give him enthusiasm. Enthusiasm has 
been a grand power in enlightening the world. A 
strong mechanical aid in awakening enthusiasm is a 
rapid utterance of words. All the world over, in every 
branch of nature’s laws, rapidity is closely related 
to heat, and heat is closely related to light. A rapid 
utterance of words stirs the spirit from indifference 
into excitement, both your spirit and the spirit of 
your hearer; it raises a gentle, genial glow over 
the whole nervous system. A succession of quick, 
decisive sentences, freely and easily delivered, will 
often kindle the mind into a luminous heat, like so 
many blasts from a pair of bellows. Enthusiasm, it 
is by all agreed, is a necessary accompaniment of 
greatness. For great things it is required in a great 
degree, and it is requisite for success in all. And so 
intimately is the idea of enthusiasm blended with 


730 AIDING INFLUENCES.' 

that of rapidity in word and action, that to hear of 
a slow, dull, heavy enthusiast would seem as strange 
as to be told of a frozen spark, or a flaming icicle. 
We should repudiate it as a flat contradiction in 
terms. If, then, you would temper yourself to the 
life-giving warmth, the fine glow of enthusiasm, if 
you would take an important step toward greatness 
of mind, cultivate rapidity ; and, in proportion as you 
succeed, you will be so much nearer to your object. 

It is not meant by this that everyone who has 
the power to talk rapidly should always be using it. 
There is no need of this, any more than a perfect 
mistress of the piano should always be hurrying 
over the keys; on the contrary, in conversation as 
in music, it is the great advantage of rapid executors 
that they can vary their time, adjust their tones and 
cadences to the demands of their subject, whereas 
all that a slow, heavy talker or performer can do is 
merely to repeat his tediousness in the same drawl¬ 
ing strain. Again, such people are always at a 
dead pull, they are never well off; while the first 
impulse, if the a man has energy enough and decision 
enough to start briskly, to commence every sentence 
forwardly, will carry him along to the end of it. He 
is not conscious of any drag, he is going down an 
inclined plane, till the moment that he stops again 
to collect himself. By all means, then, quicken your¬ 
self, work yourself into the command of rapidity. 

But how is this to be done? Read, practice 
for reading to others, rapidly; commit to memory 


SUCCESSFUL SOLICITING. 73 I 

printed conversations and recite them with proper 
sense, but rapidly, very rapidly; rave, if you please ; 
anything to give yourself the tongue of a ready 
speaker. Wind yourself to a high pitch. Make 
yourself instinct with the spirit of the orators, poets, 
historians, or dramatic persons that you represent. 
Temper the coolness of your clay with a little bar- 
rowed fire. Be strong, and faint not. But, what¬ 
ever you are about, do it for the time being as if 
you had been born for no other purpose. And, 
above all, despise not the day of little tilings, as 
many fantastic fools pretend to do. Consider that 
there are many things in daily practice of no use 
or significance in themselves, except insomuch as 
they prepare us for other things beyond them. 

Finally, the lesson of the scope and use of sym¬ 
pathy in the business affairs of life lies in the fact 
that whatever we would have men do well we must 
have them do it heartily,— from the heart; — and 
that other fact which Goethe puts into words thus: 
“You can never move the hearts of others with 
what comes not out of your own heart.” 

The great aid which a good imagination (page 129) 
gives a solicitor is the power to present his knowledge 
of his business to his hearers in life-like and vivid pict¬ 
ures. A thorough knowledge of the plea we are to 
sustain, the cause we are to champion, is first; then 
presentation of that knowledge to another is the next 
step. I bring to you some day the face, in miniature, 
of one very beautiful. You look upon it, and say, 




O 

/o- 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


“ Who is that ? ” I describe the person and give you 
the name. You say, “ It is a beautiful face.” But you 
do not, after looking at it, feel that you are acquainted 
with the person. Now I will take you home with me 
and introduce you to the friend whose name belongs to 
this picture ; but still you would not feel that you know 
her. You salute her morning and evening, converse 
with her, and take part in the social festivities. You 
admire her tact, her delicacy, and her beauty. You say 
the acquaintance opens well. She seems to you very 
lady-like and attractive. On the Sabbath day the bible- 
class assembles, and you go with your friend. In the 
recitations and the low-toned conversations she shows 
great knowledge and moral feeling, a bright intellect, 
and careful judgment. But, still, you do not feel that 
you know her. Then you fall sick, and pass through 
that interval just after a severe illness which one some¬ 
times has,— the coming dawn after a long night, the 
morning of returning health. 

In that time the hours are to be filled up, and she 
becomes a ministering angel unto you. She is full of 
resources for your comfort. You notice the wisdom of 
her management, the power she has to stimulate thought, 
to play with the imagination, and to cheer the heart. 
You are making the acquaintance of one whose portrait 
you had seen, but nothing more. And by thus living 
in communion with you, she has affected you, little by 
little, in such a manner that it has been brought home 
to you, and you say, “ I have found a friend!” “Well, 
who was she? Did you know her when you first 



SUCCESSFUL SOLICITING. 


/JO 

saw her portrait ? ” “ No ! ” The knowledge of which 

we speak comes only with acquaintance. 

So must you acquaint yourself with the cause 
you are to champion, the article you are to sell, 
the doctrine you are to teach. You must live in its 
company, see it from all sides, appreciate its weak 
points, and make its excellencies a part of your own 
being. Thus may you have vivid, rich, changeful 
outlines ever in your mind to present to your jury, 
in your class-room, or to your prospective customer. 
Suppose you engaged to sell a number of copies of 
that portrait. Without a proper preparation for the 
work you would perhaps say : “ Mr. J., I have a nice 
picture here to show you. I am told it represents a 
good, pure character. Isn’t it handsome? Every¬ 
body is pleased with it. May I send you one? I 
am selling them very cheap, too.” If Mr. J. is a 
cool, sensible person, and has not been already 
searching in vain for just such a picture, he will say: 
“Yes, it is very pretty, but I will not order one 
to-day.” And on what reasonable grounds can you 
urge him to buy? You might draw upon your own 
fancy, but the imagination which dares to build from 
fancies and not from solid facts will be sure to pre¬ 
sent some false things, which will but damage your 
cause; and to assume a tone of sincerity or put on 
a look of earnestness not really felt, is to earn the 
contemptible name of a “ brassy - faced ” demagogue. 
He has seen nothing in the picture worth buying. 
If you gave him a copy without cost it would stand 


734 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


on his side-table till its general features grew famil¬ 
iar, and then tumble into the waste-basket. Mr. J. 
would be an unconscious loser; a thing of merit 
would be unjustly slighted, and instead of a business 
profit for your pains you would have naught but a 
just blame. 

But suppose that you really knew your subject 
and felt strongly the many virtues shadowed forth 
in the portrait, your genuine earnestness of manner, 
your look and tone of confidence would alone have 
secured more than a passing notice from the same 
Mr. J. Then you could have said: “ It is really a 
pleasure to look at this picture, the figure is so 
graceful, the outlines so nearly faultless. The rosy 
bloom of health on the cheek pleases us, and then 
there is an important feature which, from the posi¬ 
tion we see the subject, we are apt to overlook; 
that is the fullness of the lower part of the forehead. 
The depth of the shadows over the eyes show it, 
and it bespeaks that keenness of perception neces¬ 
sary to discreetness and good judgment. Note, too, 
the breadth above the forehead, giving a ready imag¬ 
ination, the accompaniment of all richly sympa¬ 
thetic souls.” Then you would call his attention to 
the truthful eyes, having no evasive look; the grace¬ 
fully poised head, leaning a little, the sign of her 
ability to appreciate just praise; the waves of fine 
hair, indicating a refined and gentle nature; the 
lower face, just heavy enough for fair proportions 
and a firm character; a chin molded by love’s own 



SUCCESSFUL SOLICITING. 735 

fairies, and a mouth in whose curves dwell cheerful¬ 
ness, constancy and the purest chastity. And finally, 
“ It makes a picture, Mr. J., of pure and noble 
character well fit for many a moment of thoughtful 
attention and admiration.” And you could justly 
add: “ I believe you will regard it a wise purchase, 
for you can find in it much to interest you, and you 
will prize it as a silent, yet cheering and elevating 
companion.” Such a treatment of your subject would 
at least command Mr. J.’s respect and sympathy. 
Now analyze what you are supposed to have done. 
You went first and made a thorough acquaintance 
with the original of your picture. You found her 
full of truth, virtue, merit. Now, when you come to 
present her likeness to another, your imagination 
calls up your full conception of her, you are thrilled 
as if she were herself actually at hand, and you pre¬ 
sent her in person to Mr. J., who cannot but be 
warmed and pleased by the happy acquaintance. 

3. Aiding those solicited to form a decision .—The 
solicitor will often be perplexed at the last moment by 
the hesitation of the person who seems to be only 
“ half persuaded.” This hesitation may arise from 
three causes ; First, a lack of interest in the project, 
or proposal. It is supposed, that the solicited party 
had no particular knowledge or care about the project 
in hand before the solicitor proposed it, and if the 
solicitor has performed the first and second steps of 
“The Solicitor’s Work” faithfully and well, and fails to 
awaken an interest upon good and honest grounds, his 


73& 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


success in that case is not to be expected. Second, a 
sort of cautious hesitation, a counting of the costs pro 
and con, or a lack of confidence in the solicitor, or a 
lack of sufficient knowledge upon some point unknown 
to the solicitor. To remove these obstacles requires 
prompt and honest treatment. Modesty combined with 
firmness will command confidence in every thoughful, 
honest scheme. If the project is tinctured in any way 
with dishonesty, trickery or vice, it will, in spite of 
everything, carry in it an odor which all honest people 
will soon detect. Having secured confidence, the 
solicitor should truthfully yield all the information he 
can to enlighten the person solicited upon any point 
that person needs to know. Third, a feeling of inde¬ 
pendence which makes us all dislike to yield or even 
appear to yield a point. What would we think of a 
solicitor who would go about saying, “ Here, here is a 
new idea. It is new, and its merit is beyond question. 
You never saw its like before. Get down upon your 
knees, sir, and embrace the new idea”? Our contempt 
for that solicitor would be equaled only by our pity 
for that “ new idea ” which had so foolish a champion. 
On the other hand, let the wise solicitor remember 
that, as Ben Franklin quotes the fact, men prefer to 
be taught as if they had always known the truth, but 
have only forgotten it; and that we like to agree with 
the friends we love, and with the intelligent strang-er 

o o 

as well, if he is but modest and kind-hearted. But long 
hesitation must, as a rule, be cut short. In ordinary 
business, we can make two new converts while waiting 


HONEST METHODS. 


737 


for a decision from the hesitating party. Promptness 
and dispatch, if courteous, may on almost every occa¬ 
sion be depended upon to get the decision which 
harmonizes with just deserts in the case. 

' HONEST METHODS. 

Truth (see page 515) is always consistent with 
itself, and needs nothing to help it out ; it is always 
near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to 
drop out before we are aware; but a lie is trouble¬ 
some, and sets a man’s invention upon the rack, and 
one trick needs a great many more to make it good. 
It is like building upon a false foundation, which 
constantly stands in need of props to shore it up, 
and proves at last more costly than to have raised a 
substantial building at first upon a true and solid 
foundation; for sincerity is firm and substantial, and 
there is nothing hollow and unsound in it, and 
because it is plain and open, fears no discovery, of 
which the crafty man is always in danger; and where 
he thinks he walks in the dark, all his pretenses are 
so transparent that he who runs may read them; 
he is the last man that finds himself to be found 
out; and while he takes it for granted that he makes 
fools of others, he renders himself ridiculous. 

A COMMON DIFFICULTY. 

There is one difficulty which every person about 
to begin on any new enterprise, is almost sure to 

meet, and which we should be forewarned against. 
47 




738 AIDING INFLUENCES. 

That is,the criticism and restraint of others. There 
seems to be in every community a few people who 
take a particular pride in “speaking their minds.” 
Their frankness is little more than another name for 
cruelty, and they often say rude and heartless things 
for the mere pleasure of saying them. It is really 
very serious to observe how the arts of discourage¬ 
ment prevail. There are men, whose sole pretense 
to wisdom consists in administering discouragement. 
They seem never to be at a loss. They are equally 
ready to prophesy, with wonderful ingenuity, all pos¬ 
sible varieties of misfortune to any enterprise that is 
proposed ; and, when the thing is produced, and has 
met with some success, to find a flaw in it. Take 
the case of a fine work of art, produced in the pres¬ 
ence of an eminent fault-finder. He did not deny 
that it was beautiful, but he instantly fastened upon 
a small crack in it, that nobody had observed; and 
upon that crack he would dilate, whenever the work 
was discussed in his presence. Indeed, he did not 
see the work, but only the crack in it. That flaw, 
that little flaw, was all in all to him. 

Imagine ourselves living in the time when wheels 
were first invented for making carts to carry burdens, 
and let us listen to our chilling friend, as he talks to 
the inventor of the wheel something like this: “We 
seem to have gone on very well for thousands of 
years without this rolling thing. Your father carried 
burdens on his back. The king is content to be 
carried on men’s shoulders. The high-priest is not 


A COMMON DIFFICULTY. 


739 


too proud to do the same. Indeed, I question whether 
it is not irreligious to attempt to shift from men’s 
shoulders their natural burdens. Then, as to its suc¬ 
ceeding— for my part, I see no chance of that. 
How can it go up hill ? How is one to stop it 
going down? How often you have failed before in 
other fanciful things of the same nature! Besides, 
you are losing your time; and the yams about your 
hut are only half planted. You will be a beggar; 
and it is my duty as a friend, to tell you so plainly. 
There was a Nang-Chung: what became of him? 
We had found fire for ages, in a proper way, taking 
a proper time about it, by rubbing two sticks together. 
He must needs strike out fire at once with iron and 
flint; and what was the end ? Our sacred lords saw 
the impiety of that proceeding, and very justly impaled 
the man who imitated the heavenly powers. And, 
even if you could succeed with this new and absurd 
rolling thing, the state would be ruined. What would 
become of those who make their living by carrying 
burdens on their backs? Put aside the vain fancies 
of a childish mind, and finish the planting of your 
yams.” 

Who can imagine what the world would be to-day 
without wheeled vehicles? What other contrivance 
could possibly fill the place of wheels ? Though 
the inventor of the wheel was not crushed by his 
critical friends, who can guess how many a valuable 
thing has been lost to the'world by these untimely 
discouragements ? 

o 



740 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


We often engage in some enterprise or work 
which is very different in its nature from any pur¬ 
sued by anybody else in the community where we 
labor. This attracts to us the gaze of the cold- 
water pourers, who are found in nearly every neigh¬ 
borhood. We naturally feel rather lonely in our 
task, and desire the sympathy of those around us, 
which but gives them additional power over us. 
These discouragers are not all of one frame of mind. 
Some are led to indulge in this recreation from gen¬ 
uine timidity. They really do fear that all new 
attempts will fail. Others are simply envious and 
ill-natured. Then, again, there is a sense of power 
and wisdom in prophesying evil. It is the safest 
thing to prophesy, for hardly anything at first suc¬ 
ceeds exactly in the way it was intended to succeed. 
Again, there is the lack of imagination, which gives 
rise to the utterance of so much discouragement. 
It requires more or less imaginative power (page 
129) to grasp a new idea, or understand the merits 
of a business and conceive of its methods. 

Of them all, the well-meaning but timid advisers 
are the most dangerous. Their intended kindness 
toward us touches our hearts, and it is not easy to 
slight their advice ; but if we yield, what do we gain ? 
The good will of a coward, nothing more; his aid 
would not be worth much in any new project. And 
what do we lose ? Everything. 

Even when we are compelled to admit that our 
efforts have not been a complete success, we must 


A COMMON DIFFICULTY. 


741 


remember that after all, men do not most usually 
succeed through success. They much oftener succeed 
through failure. By far the best experience of men 
is made up of their remembered failures in dealing 
with others in the affairs of life. Such failures in 
sensible men, incite to better self-management, and 
greater tact and self-control, as a means of avoiding 
them in the future. Ask the diplomatist, and he 
will tell you that he has learned his art through 
being baffled, defeated, thwarted, and circumvented, 
far more than from having succeeded. Precept, study, 
advice, and example could never have taught them 
so well as failure has done. It has disciplined them 
experimentally and taught them what to do as well 
as what not to do — which is often the more important 
in diplomacy. 

Many have to make up their minds to encounter 
failure again and again before they succeed; but if they 
have pluck, the failure will only serve to rouse their 
courage, and stimulate them to make renewed efforts. 
Talma, the greatest of actors, was himself hissed off 
the stage when he appeared on it. Lacordaire, one of 
the greatest preachers of modern times, only acquired 
celebrity after repeated failures. Montalembart said 
of his first public appearance in the Church of St. 
Roch: “He failed completely, and, on coming out, 
every one said, ‘Though he may be a man of talent, 
he will never be a preacher.’” Again and again he 
tried, until he succeeded ; and only two years after his 
debut, Lacordaire was preaching in Notre Dame to 




742 


AIDING INFLUENCES. 


audiences such as few French orators have addressed 
since the time of Bossuet and Massillon. 


Conclusion. 

When your occupation is chosen and you are 
enlisted in the ranks of earnest strivers, let the soul 
of work take possession of your spirit. All true 
work is sacred; in all true work, though it be but 
true hand labor, there is something of divineness. 
Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven. 
Sweat of the brow; and up from that to sweat of 
the brain, sweat of the heart, which includes all 
Kepler calculations, Newton meditations, all sciences, 
all spoken epics, all acted heroisms, martyrdoms,— 
up to that “agony of bloody sweat,” which all men 
have called divine! Oh, brother, if this is not wor¬ 
ship, then, I say, the more pity for worship ; for this 
is the noblest thing yet discovered under God’s sky. 
Who art thou that complainest of thy life of toil ? 
Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother; see 
thy fellow-workmen there in God’s eternity; sur¬ 
viving there, they alone surviving ; sacred band of 
immortals, celestial body-guard of the empire of 
mankind. 



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